


one night on the wild hunt

by Grand_Phoenix



Series: An Exercise in Futility [4]
Category: Tales of Berseria
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Body Worship, Bottom Velvet, Crimes & Criminals, Dirty Thoughts, Doodle is Just Done, Double Entendre, F/F, Female Gaze, Flirting, Humor, I switched out LaCroix for hint water, Light Angst, Lime, Mutual Pining, Nudism, References to Depression, SUDDENLY WORLDBUILDING, Self-Reflection, Sexual Humor, So very dirty, Still, Strip Tease, TERRIBLE ABSENTMINDED FLIRTING, Top Eleanor, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Velvet's got a lot to unpack, Velvet's so shook she can move mountains, Wet Dream, Worldbuilding, abs kink, along with several pairs of Not-So-Subtle Sledgehammers, btw this is inspired by hint water, fuck me it's not even subtle anymore is it?, girls please take a hint, he's Advanced Done, leans heavy on the New Jack Swing aesthetics, look at these two dopes, nay he's been past Done a long time ago, so I bought more at the local THIRST STORE, so getcha some hint water, so much thirst, they're all so playing hard to get, thirst, this sledgehammer is so subtle it broke several times, we need more top!Eleanor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:53:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22012132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grand_Phoenix/pseuds/Grand_Phoenix
Summary: A lot goes unsaid, when the sun goes down. (Or, a peek into Velvet's day, when Eleanor's not around.)
Relationships: Velvet Crowe/Eleanor Hume
Series: An Exercise in Futility [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555678
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	one night on the wild hunt

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Viennese Waltz](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20827727) by [Talonted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talonted/pseuds/Talonted). 



> This fic.
> 
> _This fucking fic._
> 
> I remember saying one day at work, to a coworker, that I had the itch to write another 10k novelette, but I wasn't sure what. I had told him how much I loved _Warcraft_ \- so much so that I love popping the male night elf salute emote over the standard salute - but I couldn't think of anything separate from my one-shot WIPs I wanted to write. The newest expansion doesn't come out until later in 2020, and _Classic_ so far hasn't been giving me any inspiration to dabble in. This was back in November, when I decided to take a sabbatical from WoW fics for a bit.
> 
> Then, one day, as I was browsing the ToB archive, I came upon Talonted's "Viennese Waltz", and how they were inspired by "the sun crests over mountains and valleys pure and white" during Tales of Femslash '19 (something I wish I'd partaken in, but given the work schedule and my glacial pace, it wasn't happening). I was very surprised to learn I was a source of inspiration, but I won't lie when I say I wasn't touched by it. So much that I got the document out of my USB drive and picked up where I left off...
> 
> When it was a mere 3k words (or somewhere around there).
> 
> I never imagined this would blow up into the herculean beast that it is now. Nor did I imagine it'd suddenly have WORLDBUILDING in a story that's, well, started out on a premise as silly as naked gardening (I imitated many Kermit the Frog reaction memes as I worked on it). It also got a little saucier, too (and the Kermit reactions intensified!)...but I wanted to make it worthwhile, as someone who's still getting used to writing romances, so even though it was incredibly difficult I pushed on nonetheless!
> 
> There's much, much more to be said about the development of this piece (I'm thinking of making either a bonus chapter or a Tumblr post about it), but I'll end it here. Given how the final version turned out (other than wanting to go back and retouch the older fics into a series less framed on Earth and more Earth framed in a Tales Of flare), I'll need a short break from indulging more in Veleanor content lol Still, there's more material to be had for this AU; let's hope for my sake they won't be as stupidly massive as this one.

A jingle of wind chimes rings sweet in the air, clear and loud.

Doodle barks, and there’s a clatter of nails on the cement (nails that are too long, Velvet thinks, and remembers that she keeps telling herself—as well as forgetting--she’s going to trim them so he can stop sliding across the kitchen floor) as he gets up on his paws and all but pushes his nose, ever cold and ever wet, against her bare leg.

DON’T LOOK NOW, HERE COMES TROUBLE.

Velvet turns away from the motorcycle and looks.

“Woof!” says Doodle.

Velvet doesn’t see him, tongue lolling and tail wagging.

She doesn’t even hear him, nor feel the shock of him slamming his nose into her a second time.

_Whoa,_ Velvet thinks; and if anyone were to ask her, as she st ands  still and time passe s all around her, what words she would like to have on her tombstone,  that alone would be the one. Of course, that requires  _talking_ , and at this moment her brain has forgotten how to string more than two syllables together.

S o it compels her to do the next best thing to keep her alive:  _breathe_ .

She does, eyes  tunneling in on  Eleanor as she closes and locks the door behind her. She’s dressed for work,  in a  pair of (FORM-FITTING, her mind reels) slacks and a white button-down blouse with the collar popped and the sleeves rolled up to just below the elbows.  There’s a cute little leather purse hanging off one arm and a  dark blue cardigan over the other that pulls away from the doorknob, keys in hand on a metal ring – and it’s the big kind of ring, the one prison guards like to carry and hook onto their belts that hold their handcuffs, blackjack, and gun all over the front; but the belt she wears is thin, and black, and it’s a miracle that shirt is stuffed any further south than it already is.  It makes it look her chest is about to--

Velvet breathes.

She jolts, suddenly, when  Doodle makes those heavy panting noises that means he’s spazzing out on all fours and bashes that hammer-head skull of his against her.

T hat blows all the fog away, and suddenly Velvet feels small. There’s grass, and there are trees, flowers of all different colors in the bushes and in the boxes underneath the window sills. There are little white butterflies fluttering through the air, even a dragonfly.  Distantly, on the other side of the block, someone’s blasting hip-hop.  Somewhere, on the other side of the world, the moon sits in a dark sky crowned by stars.

Eleanor’s hair is down, tapering off just beneath her shoulder blades. Long and flowing and bright red; _au natural_ , not the fake shit people like to put on their scalps with chemicals that are harmful for your _roots_ and the _environment_. This is something you’d see from a late-night anime with the main female character...except every one of those redheaded MCs were _fake_ and much too _extra_ (whatever the flying hell that meant; internet lingo evolves worse than a Pokemon), and--

_When did she grow it out?_ _It looks so soft._

“Woof!” Doodle says. Standing a few feet away from her, not quite crossing the strip of lawn that divides their little abodes but far away enough on the driveway for him to outrun her if she gives chase, he looks back at her. Smiling.

TODAY IS SUNDAY. YOU ARE OFF. SHE IS NOT.

SAY SOMETHING.

IT’S NOW OR NEVER.

(Now see, a lot of things can be interpreted from that single statement.

But there’s no time to waste on weighing moral conundrums of the sexual variety, and in spite of all the goodwill and religious upbringing she’s had in her life, Eleanor, like all normal, rationally minded humans trying to survive, loves seeing her well-earned gald go into her well-earned bank account.)

YOU CAN DO IT.

Velvet does. “Good morning. Little early to be painting the town red, don’t you think?”

(For one very brief, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, out of the corner of her eye, a shadow flits over Doodle’s face. _Just a bird,_ a voice in Velvet’s head whispers. _Robins and cardinals and blue jays going around to feed their chicks_ _and do whatever the hell they feel like._

She doesn’t recall hearing any birds chirping and tweeting and doing birdly things. At least, so far as she could tell. Strange.)

Eleanor stops, bewildered. “Velvet, it’s seven in the morning.”

“That’s alright, there’s a first time for everything.”

“I’m going to the church today.”

“Just take a shot of holy water, they won’t know the difference.”

“No, but the gods will.”

“Then go to the confessional and make a donation for your penance. Everything goes to a good cause.”

“You’re terrible--”

“I know.”

“--but that’s rich, coming from someone who’s now old enough to indulge but has never tasted a drop of alcohol in her life!”

“I’m a law-abiding citizen. I’m a good girl.”

A snort. “Oh, please. You and the law are about as estranged as Magilou and common sense.”

Velvet smirks. “Long shift today, huh?” she asks.

“’Til one, the usual. I’m filling in for someone who couldn’t make it in. After that, I have a couple days off before I go back to the office.”

“Lucky. I’m on most of this week. Rokurou’s going to be busy at the dojo and I’ll be having the run of the shop until the head honcho comes back from his business trip.”

“At least you’ll be home early. I bet it gets tiring working on all those vehicles after a while, huh?”

“Not always. But the rest is well worth it.” _And the gald,_ she thinks. Oh sweet, blessed, well-earned gald. ( _But only so long as you keep that nose of yours in auto body parts and nowhere else, mind you,_ Grimorh’s voice interjects faintly—loudly, as if she’s standing right behind Velvet, mouth by the shell of her ear and what may or may not be the butt of an air-soft gun or that damn metal pointer digging into the small of her back in one hand. _We have enough problems with all this pollution as it is, you know._

Of course. Breathing shit and carbon monoxide is _bad_.)

“Rest is good. But it’s nice to get out and about every now and then. We can hit up the mall again when I come back, if you like.”

“Yeah. I don’t mind.”

“Woof!” Doodle says, wagging his tail at Eleanor.

“You, too, boy. I’d never forget about you. Come here!” She crouches down just as Doodle clears the rest of the strip in three bounding strides and scrambles his front paws on her chest and shoulders for purchase. In one, fluid motion she scoops him up into her arms and cards her fingers over his ears, the tuft of fur between them, the fluff around his neck jutting from his collar, all while being licked at. “Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy? You are!”

“Woof!”

“Empyreans, you’re heavy! What’s Velvet been feeding you?”

_You mean, what doesn’t he eat,_ Velvet wants to grouse.  His nails are so long, with the way he’s going at it trying to cling to her he’s going to end up ripping that shirt to shreds. And not just the shirt, but her bra, too; and Eleanor’s a freak with silk and lace no matter how hot the bathhouses get, she’s always—so far as Velvet remembers—has to have one on. At least one, and if Doodle, in his blind,  oafish joy, gets his claws on that  then \--

T hen--

( Suddenly, a memory: it’s middle school, eighth grade. Science class. The teacher is going over the basics of gravity and how it keeps your feet on the ground and head out of the clouds. Her and Eleanor are sitting together at one tall,  ob long desk at the back of the classroom, and even though Eleanor isn’t looking she’s not taking any pains stopping Velvet from copying her notes word for word in her crappy doodle-strewn spiral notebook. The notes themselves aren’t even about gravity but the periodic table, and either by dint or some perverse roll of the die Velvet has  Fluorine and Uranium next to each other down the row;  and it takes both her hands over her mouth and a very hard dig to the ribs from Eleanor’s elbow to stop her from collapsing into full-on belly-aching laughter the moment her brain shorts out and reads only the  _most obvious letters_ it  _wants_ to read.

B ut that isn’t really what brings this dusty fossil to the forefront of her mind. It’s the dull voice of the teacher droning on about gravity that does. What comes _up_ must always come _down_. Something - everything - has to _give_ , no matter what it is: leaves, apples, stray bullets, a lacy silk bra _—_ )  


Velvet breathes through her nose, swallows. Not even eight in the morning and her throat’s already dry.  Surely there’s one more bottle of water in the cooler somewhere….

“Okay, boy, I have to go. Let’s put you _down_.” She gets back low to the ground and sets Doodle loose, and stands back up brushing the fur off her blouse and jacket. “Velvet, you have to brush him more! I think he’s starting to shed again.”

“If I brush him any more, he won’t have any fur left for the winter. It’s a husky’s greatest sin.”

“Velvet, he’s a Samoyed.”

“Whatever he is. He's something."

“Well as much as I’d love to stay and help you figure it out, but I really have to go now. I don’t want to miss the bus. You take care of her, Doodle,” Eleanor says, earning a tilted head and perked ears from him. “Make sure she doesn’t cause _too much_ trouble.”

“Woof!” he replies, tail flipping and curling up behind him.

“I told you, I’m a good girl. I have wings.”

Eleanor snorts. “Right. And I have a pair of devil horns. I’ll see you later.” She starts walking.

“Hey,” Velvet calls. “Don’t forget.”

“Forget what?” Eleanor asks, stopping at the end of the driveway.

“You and I are off Friday.”

“...What about it?”

Velvet smiles. “You know.”

“...No. No, I don’t know.”

“We made a deal, Hume. Two days ago. You think the church looks so nice, with their finely cut lawns and prearranged flowers in their window boxes the Empyreans look over every night and day? Step into my garden the way man once did, long ago, at the dawn of creation, and behold--”

“You’re really aching to see me naked, aren’t you?!” Eleanor exclaims out loud, brows knitting together on a face steadily and quickly flaring with redness. “The thought of my body, unclothed, on display for every bird, bee, squirrel and _ant_ to see is just tormenting you for every hour of every minute of every second that goes by with each and every passing day, isn’t it?”

Velvet blinks. (Feigning innocence—honestly and truly, cross her heart and hope to die. Celica always said that liars were never wont to prosper. But no one has to know, only the dead did...but the dead...well, they’re _dead_. They can’t have the joy of never letting her live it down if they could _speak_.) “It’s just a reminder. We’re going to be busy women this week, you and I. One of us is bound to forget--”

“I’m not going to forget! I’m going to do it! In fact, you know what, I don’t have to do it on Friday. I can do it any day I please!”

“Wait, what--”

“I’ll just pop over one day,” Eleanor continues, as if she didn’t hear her, “not say a word, look you in the eye...and _strip_. Strip for all my worth. It doesn’t have to be in your garden. It doesn’t even have to be in the morning. It could be your living room. It could be your kitchen. I might even decide to get bold and drop everything in your bedroom!”

Velvet stares. Eleanor stares back.

Doodle claps his mouth shut with an audible click that’s much too loud and holds his tail aloft, ears erect.

The sound of a car a couple streets down revs its engine, blasting a piece of gangster funk and burnt rubber in its wake.

Somehow, whether by a stroke of pure luck, damage control, or a flash of divine protection from the Heavenly Steppes or the Hellgates, Velvet manages to swallow perfectly fine. Just fine: her heart is still beating quite healthily in her chest, the humidity in the air is just the right amount of warmth on her skin, the backdrop of the city’s skyscrapers on the horizon amid the foreground of colorful one-story houses, open-door garages and pretty lawn ornaments makes for a wonderful cover for some city pop album and Eleanor is front and center.

_Would she really do that?_

_Like, straight up break into my home, wake me up, and just--_

Velvet studies Eleanor’s face. The indignation, the embarrassment, the affront.

The determination.

She swallows.

_Well._

_Well then._

_Huh._

_Okay._

_If that’s how she wants it, then that's what she'll get.  
_

“Okay,” she finally says, tone level and teasing, and doesn’t quite quash the smirk that slips out at the way Eleanor’s eyes blow wide open. “Sure. Come on over. I have a few spare keys under the welcome mat you can use to get in. After that...well,” she shrugs, “ball’s in your court. We can do whatever your little heart desires _—_ ”

“I’m going to work!”

“Eh? But we can--”

“No! We’re not doing any of that sinful nonsense!”

“Sinful? It’s just gardening at night in the buff _—_ ”

“I’m done! You’re done! Doodle’s done! We’re all done!”

“Woof!”

“What? But I’m not _—_ ”

“Woof!”

“Yes, you are! You're done!"

"But -"

"You have a blessed, sinless day!”

"Wait -"

“Woof!”

With a harrumph, Eleanor whirls briskly on her heel and walks away, in the direction of the bus stop.

T hey watch her go until she rounds the corner and is no longer visible, her footsteps gone, and her red hair but a memory. The haze of the morning heat plays on the blacktop, will probably boil the streets and crank up the allergens in the air later on in the day.  Soon the sun will catch on the windows of the high rise, setting the horizon alight with fire and transmitting radio waves.

They stand alone: Velvet and Doodle. No one else is awake; if they are, they’ve yet to step outside of their homes. The birds are still singing, traffic is still hustling miles away, and some idiot keeps backfiring their damn muffler  on the other side of the block  in between snatches of ‘La Raza’ playing almost outside human  hearing.

E ven still, everything feels...quiet. Different.

She wants to reach out, as far as her arm will allow her, grab  Eleanor, and pull her back.

_And then what?_

Velvet sighs. “Well. She’s gone. It’s just you and me, boy.” She looks down, right at Doodle’s smiling, upturned face. He cocks his head to one side, swipes his tail back and forth.

She frowns. “Wh y are you looking at me like that ?”

He tilts his head further, ears flapping.

“I didn’t do anything wrong. You were right there. She walked right into that.”

D oodle huffs, tosses his head up and left and right, stamps his paws on the ground.

“I know her, Doodle. She can talk the talk but she won’t walk the walk. Eleanor’s going to be the good girl that she is and wait; and when the day finally arrives it’ll be...well. It’ll be like any other day. No different than going to the bathhouses, or the showers after P.E. when we were in high school. It’s just skin.”

Doodle  twists around and gnaws  on his ass with his teeth, lips curled up to reveal black gums.

“Hey. You be nice now.”

He digs in even more, claws flexing to keep him upright.

“Skin is skin, Doodle. I know what she looks like underneath, and she knows what I look like underneath. I don’t know why you’re making such a big issue out of it. Like, no one knows I do this and no one knows she’s going to do this. Promises are promises; you are obligated to not break them. Seriously, who is she going to tell? Rokurou would just laugh his ass and never shut up about it, Eizen won’t give a damn because it’s not his business, and Magilou….” Velvet nods slowly. “The day Magilou finds out will be the day I go back to my old ways.”

Doodle sneezes once, twice, raises a paw to scratch his snout.

“Everything will be fine. She’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. It’ll just be like the old days. Just, you know, outside. But with fences to keep out all the prying eyes and the sun to warm our skin.”

“Woof!”

“Look, if the drones and the airliners get a peep in on this, there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m an ex-convict, not a force of nature. Shit happens.”

“Woof!”

“What about you? You’re going to watch, anyway. No lock in the world is going to stop you from finding your way in...somehow. Honestly, I don’t know how you do it. What's the catch?”

Doodle smiles.

“You’re a sly one, Doodle. Go ahead. Keep your secrets. ‘S not like it’s possible for me to replicate them in my lifetime, anyway.”

Doodle grins and wags his tail fast enough to shake his hips.

Velvet sighs again, rubs the back of her neck. “Well. I suppose I should finish putzing around with the bike here and, oh I dunno. Maybe I’ll take her out for a spin later, see how well she’s running with the adjustments I gave her.”

Doodle cocks his head again, this time to the other side.

“Yeah, I know she’s fine. I’ve been touching her up every day for the past two – no, almost three weeks now. I’m just making sure she’s in tip-top shape. Besides, I don’t really have anywhere to go today except the mall unless Eleanor changes her mind. I’ve to keep an eye on my money, you know. I’m but a single woman with a criminal record and tangential ties to the underworld, living on her own with a dog that – and I’m not trying to be rude here, Doodle, this is just my opinion – just showed up literally out of the blue one day. If this were any other city, I’d have garroted myself on my own dwindling budget a long time ago.”

Another head tilt.

“I have _not_ been spending _that_ much, Doodle. Most of my bills are covered by the Bloodwings, so that just leaves me with groceries and the rent I owe Grimoirh every month. Eleanor and I just go window shopping and hit up the food court, you know that.”

“Woof!” Doodle yips, and gets down on his front paws, rear end sticking up.

“If she wants something, she need only say it. It doesn’t have to be just spotting a few gald here and there. Friends cover each other all the time. They buy each other gifts. Why, if they were lucky and were to hit the jackpot, they’d buy them anything in the world. Anything their hearts desire. It’s not only common sense, boy, it’s congeniality.”

Doodle gets back up with a sigh and paws at his nose again, then shakes himself hard enough to rattle the tags on his collar. Walks past her and, as Velvet turns around and follows him with her eyes, goes up to her bike to lean forward and sniff it.

Every time. Every time he does that, she thinks he’s going to get the idea in his head to raise a leg and take a piss all over it. Her girl. Her precious Lucifron. Yellow does not bring out the best in black and red. There’s so much acid being expelled from a living body. If it can burn grass (grass she has so painstakingly maintained and cared so much for it looks like it’s been lifted from a golf course than a scruffy carpet most of these houses keeping their heads above the middle-class waters sport), it could probably burn the paint and varnish off it.

Doodle turns to look back with that damn, clockwork head tilt and a smile that’s sure to grace the face of every seraphim that walks beyond the gates of the Heavenly Steppes.

ARE YOU GOING TO FINISH THIS THING?

Velvet studies the motorcycle. Lucifron’s been spit-shined and glossed over so many times one would think it’s brand new and not a rotting, lonely skeleton she’d pull from the junkyard right down the street from the auto shop the first couple weeks into the job and already bored of walking to the bus stop and riding its cramped seats reeking of the sweet-strong consummation of body spray, grade-A weed, and burnt tacos. And so much money had to be dropped to replace everything, despite the constant barrage of text messages Grimoirh sent her way every damn hour once she caught wind of it and not-quite-but-close-to-it insisted she’d cover all the costs. Or, if Velvet needed to file the edge of her teeth on something, do some other odd jobs that wouldn’t have others look twice and recognize a, well, very local celebrity.

Velvet had said no: that kind of life was behind her now. The damage was done. She’d already considered it a miracle someone gave somewhat of a shit about her and strangle the law by the balls to put her here, in the farthest corner of the suburbs that wouldn’t look out of place in a bizarro magazine of pristine 1950’s Tranquility Lane-inspired roadwork and late ‘80s-early ‘90s residential grittiness. Grimoirh is going to die someday, she told her to her face, straight-faced and as casually as one would be remarking the weather (if she cared to feel insulted, she didn’t show it; the fact that none of the suits showed up in the days following that was a pleasant surprise that almost gave way to the old paranoia waiting to reemerge from its grave); she can’t and couldn’t very well rely on her or the Bloodwings all the time to bail her out of financial trouble or run-ins with religious conservatives and evangelicals that openly express their wishes to see her burn in hell for all eternity, or right-wing nutjobs wheedling her for a bit of their time to strut and crow over unfounded conspiracies instigated by the deep state. Money had to come honestly now: hard-earned and not a single speck of blood to be found.

And what a lot of good that kind of sinless money has earned: new wheels, new chassis, new paint job, new everything. The gas tank is filled. The little sidecar bag that Doodle sits in is always free of dog hair. The horn works. There’s always a loaded gun and a combat knife in a secret compartment (just to be safe, although Magilou had the wonderful suggestion that if she really wanted to cover her tracks she’d ought to load Lucy up with _bombs_ full of _shrapnel—_ bombs that are probably three times as much as all the bike’s parts combined).

There’s a helmet in the rear compartment for when Eleanor rides shotgun. Flushed up against her, arms wrapped around her waist and, through no fault of her own, feeling the scrap of her nails over her stomach with a feather-light gentleness that gets the hairs on her arms standing on end and a heat to pool in her stomach that matches the one the engine gave off between her legs as it clenched and flexed with each touch.

She goes up to it, and Doodle backs up off to the side as she comes to a stop in front of it. Puts a hand on the seat, the leather cool beneath her skin.

Doodle snorts and licks his lips, leans back on his hind legs and raises his front paws to stretch out before him.

The graze of his claws stirs her back to reality. “You know what? I think Lucy can go a day or two without the ole Crowe magic. What time is it?” She pulls the cell phone out from the back pocket of her jeans. “A quarter to eight? What the fresh hell have I been doing standing around looking like a dope?”

“Hmm!” Doodle hums, giving her the side-eye and flapping ears.

“Oh be quiet. How was I supposed to know staring at the road for a couple minutes would almost turn into an hour?”

“Woof!”

“Don’t you get sassy with me. Only I can sass. This is my house in the middle of the street. Anything goes!”

“Hmm!”

“Bah! Forget it. You’re just a dog,” Velvet says with a shake of her head, and stuffs the phone away. “In one ear and out the other. That’s all you know how to do." Takes her hand off the seat, straightens up, and stares out into the distance, toward the shopping districts.

(An hour.

A single, goddamn hour.)

“Well,” she begins, “since we don’t have anywhere to go for the time being, that leaves us with the garden.” She looks down at him and grins. “Let’s go sinning.”

Doodle barks and grins back. SINNING IS WINNING.

He follows her into the garage, catching up with her as she rounds the corner and browses through a steel bookcase that contains all her music CDs—most of them bought cheap from pawn shops, others bootlegged and burned off the internet when said shops proved to be stingy sons of bitches.

“Let’s see...what am I in the mood for….” Velvet’s fingers flick through the plastic covers, scanning the artists and the album names before moving onto the next one. “Bobby Brown...Ralph Tresvant...Johnny Gill...SVW…Janet Jackson...geez, what was I thinking, putting all the same songs on different discs...hey, watch where you put your nose, Doodle. I don’t want prints all over them. Come on, come on, lemme find something good…ah, here we go.” She grabs a case and makes a show of tapping the front cover for Doodle to see. “Right here, boy, is _music_. Actual, authentic music. Not the auto-tuned, millennial yodeling bullcrap that have taken over your shopping malls and retail outlets.”

In big, black, looping letters, the cover reads: NEW JACK SWING MEGAMIX.

“If the neighbors aren’t up by now...well. They’re about to be.” She exits the garage through the screen door and turns to the table that’s situated right against the wall as soon as she steps into the backyard. A boombox sits atop it.

Velvet sets the cell phone next it, props open the disc holder on the box and slips the CD inside.

Next, the tools, taken off the workbench back inside: spade, shears for grass and sheers for pruning, trowel, dibber. Then the rake and the hoe, and mulch bags and the broom.

Finally, the sprinkler. She places it away from the garden, where the bushes grow and sidle up against the fence that divides her lawn from the street on the other side of the block, and switches the little dial to ON. The hose is unfurled all the way, spilling from the rack and thrown across the grass like a thick, rubbery snake. Each tossed loop sends Doodle scuttling back and forth across the yard, lunging and hopping away from it in several long, galloping strides around the lawn.

As he’s running (and kicking up grass, a sure sign he’s about to go full Indy 500 in and out of the house), Velvet turns on the boombox and hits the PLAY button. Static crackles, spurts, settles.

“You ready?” she asks Doodle. He comes a skidding halt in front of the sprinkler, the front of his body low and rear sticking up. His white tail is a blur.

Teeth bared in a devious grin, heart pounding, she cranks the volume up all the way right as the guys start chanting right out the gate.

“I GOT HER,” they say. “SHE’S MINE.”

The table shakes, the walls bounce behind her. She ducks down and turns the pressure valve all the way. Water shoots out from the sprinkler’s three-pronged handles and the spout at the top, and Doodle barks. He jumps at the jets, twists his body, lands on all fours and jumps again. When he comes back down he kicks up grass and does a lap around the sprinkler; the mad ringing of his tags are barely discernible above the subwoofers rocking.

Velvet laughs, a low rumble from her throat. “Take it easy there, boy. Sod doesn’t come cheap.” Doodle doesn’t stop running and jumping, but he seems to slow down, and resorts to pouncing and nipping at the water even as it pelts him unrelentingly in the face.

“Crazy dog,” she mutters. “At least you’ll be kept busy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a garden to tend.” With those words, she grabs her shirt by the hem and peels it off, up, up, over her head.

As soon as it’s off and bunched up between her wrists, she picks her head up and shakes the hair that’s fallen over her eyes. “That’s right. Water.” The sun is warm on her skin and warming now over her back and chest, but the thirst is there, has been there for probably over the course of the hour she spent standing in the middle of the driveway looking like a dumbass waiting for something, anything, to happen. (A whole hour!)

She drops the shirt onto the table as she goes into the garbage and opens the door leading into the kitchen. Opens the cooler and pulls out the six pack of ice-frosted water that’s already sweating by the time she returns and Daryl Adams is going on about how the woman that came in through the door was his, he had her and wanted her to be with him tonight, so leave them the hell alone, guys. Doodle has just stopped shaking the water off his coat, too, turning himself into a bigger ball of white fluff that walks and barks whose only visible body parts are his little black nose and wagging tail that’s spraying drops onto the grass and bushes.

A welcome help, but nowhere near enough to keep them soaked for the afternoon. “I’m going to turn the hose on,” she tells him, and that’s his cue to fly to the back of the yard and try to catch the water with his mouth.

Seeing him preoccupied, Velvet puts her hands on her belt and starts unbuckling.

If one were to ask her what made her wake up one day and decide that naked gardening is the go-to way to giving back to Mother Nature and harvest the fruits of her labor, Velvet would be hard pressed to say when exactly the idea made itself home in her head. She certainly didn’t entertain the thought all those years ago, when the world seemed alright and all the troubles were far removed from home, although she could say that she helped Celica tend to the landscaping as she was growing up. Back then they had lived in Aball, a rural little town that’d make Pendrago look like a high-end utopia of capitalism and innovation, and taxes were just as high back then as they are now in the big city. If it wasn’t the farmers’ market or the mom and pop shops they could acquire their wares from, then it had to be by time, weather, and hand. So that was what they did, her and Celica and, very rarely but when he felt well enough to be out of bed, Laphi, and though their harvest didn’t always produce the best results they had grown enough to ease the pangs of the family wallet.

It’s probably long gone now, the backyard garden and the front lawn shrubbery that Celica tried – and ultimately failed – to trim into all kinds of birds that weren’t childishly inked on paper cranes and fortune cards. The house has probably been demolished, too; no one likes to be reminded of the darkness that lurks in all man, especially in their fellow man they had called neighbors and lived so close to the sanctuary of their homes.

So it certainly isn’t the old life, she’d tell that person. If there had to be a moment where she’d pinpoint when exactly she began to fancy the idea, it would most likely have occurred in prison. Secreted away from general population yet under constant surveillance despite spending the majority of that time either pacing back and forth in her cell, sleeping, or curled up in a corner (with just enough light; they never trusted her to be in the shadows during the day). There had been a window—small and rectangular, high up on the furthermost wall away from the gates, with bars over the glass to filter in the sun or the moon; and though she could never see what lay beyond the facility besides the sky, the clouds, and the stars, it was the one thing that provided her a small measure of peace, mired as she was in her own thoughts and the possible, impending doom that dangled over her head like Shepherd Siegfried’s blade.

The air is an instant starburst to her skin, as always, but Velvet makes it a habit to stand on that part of the lawn closest to the garage’s side door where the sun spills over the rooftop at her back. Her skin prickles and puckers with the slight breeze and the few, random spurts of water that fly at her, but slowly it warms. Slowly, the heat of the day embraces her. Becomes her.

Velvet closes her eyes, tips her head up, and inhales. Dampness of the morning dew on the grass, the marigolds and zinnias in their window boxes, the dirt being upturned by Doodle’s paws, Doodle himself as he shakes the water out of his fur—everything comes together here. Here, in this little garden. Not the plain, yellowing, knee-high jungle of flies, gnats, and trash she plunged into when Grimoirh gave her a tour of the house (and laughed when she reemerged with dandelion fluff in her hair and the inner rubber tube of a motorbike tire ringed around her shoulders, large like a Southgand lei made for a hulking firedancer and not a pasty stringbean from the boonies).

Here. Certainly not the Shepherd’s Paradise at the Dawn of Phantasia, but a little slice in the image conceived in her head nonetheless.

_Mine,_ Velvet thinks, chest swelling with pride.  _All mine._

Then, another thought, and it makes it sting with a pain that’s sharp but not entirely unpleasant:  _This can be yours, too._

She shivers.

“Woof!” says Doodle, face expectant and tail at full speed. Ass up in the air, because of course it is. Of course he wants to lose himself in the mania all dogs are possessed with where there is water involved.

The hose isn’t on, and the sun is still beating a hot tattoo on the back of her neck. Velvet stares down at herself, divested of everything save for her undergarments (all black, and wasn’t it Rokurou who said once that girls who wear black bras and panties meant they were thirsty for sex, or was that red? What did it matter now, that’d been nine years ago and Celica, in her infinite wisdom, _still_ couldn’t bring herself to give her and Laphi The Dreaded Talk) that put all her old knife wounds, the scar from where the bullet went clean through her left side and the scar above her heart where she was skewered, and the athletic musculature she honed with an almost religious fervor during those years on the track team on display.

Doodle flails.

“One sec,” Velvet tells him, and as she’s pushing one strap down over her shoulder she goes back to the side door where the white panel hangs unceremoniously on the threshold. She turns it on, waits for it to boot up, and inputs the code that will put the whole house – and maybe the rest of the neighborhood, if Benwick crossed his wires right – on high alert if someone so much as sets a centimeter into the garage.

The Leech Finder might be the one-of-a-kind device in electronic surveillance (and very, _very_ illegal; it’s a very good thing Magilou sometimes has the attention span of a bird on antihistamines) but let it never be said it’s used for just voice recognition, fingerprints, nose prints, hair scans, tongue scans and retinal scans. The house is stupidly wired up the ass, and if the cops were to pull up and check out the place they’d never be able to tell it apart from a normal, outdoors thermometer you’d find in the lawn and garden section at the local supercenter. With how much they claim they can do a better job than the CIA, the FBI, and the TSA, people still haven’t been able to rub their two brain cells hard enough to make the connection that the Bloodwings the media hyped up to hysterical, fear-mongering levels back in the day have other means of making bank that doesn’t involve drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, black market auction house flipping, and defeating overfishing from zealous competitors one fish farm at a time.

She undoes the clips holding the panel together and pries it back to check inside. The wires are still good, the batteries not yet needing to be changed. There’s still a bit of Magilou’s blood in the little vial left before it needs to be...refilled.

Perfect.

Velvet snaps it closed (tight, because Magilou has this wonderful habit of popping over at random times, never sending a text or sending a phone call or—on the not so rare occasion when she feels like being a smug shit openly courting an early death—a dove, and loudly announcing her presence with that ridiculous contraption she calls a _car_ ) and returns to the backyard. The water is sweating, the boombox is rattling, her ears are ringing with tinnitus. The sun on her skin, heart in her throat as she doffs the rest of her garments and leaves them folded on the table.

She swallows. Dry already.

Doodle watches as she stoops down and takes the hose in her hand.

“Think fast,” she says, and shoots a blast of cold water at him that wipes the smirk off his face.

* * *

It’s messy work—how can it not be, when one isn’t wearing a single article of clothing?--but after a good, solid two hours pass Velvet dusts off her hands and steps back to survey her work.

The plants are watered. The shrubs are trimmed. The yard raked. The dirt turned over. Even the lawn ornaments—black wolves with red and yellow eyes sitting sentinel on thick blocks of marble, because even before those criminal days those colors were, have been, and always will be straight bitchin’ _—_ are arrayed in their respective rows to an exact, symmetrical T.

Velvet sucks in a deep breath, tasting green earth, fresh water, and--

“Woof!”

–and, as she glances down at her feet, wet dog.

Doodle’s tail swishes left and right when their gazes meet. In this moment, at this hour, he’s not a Samoyed-Husky mix. He’s a drenched mop that completely and shamelessly shows how small and robust he looks.

_Like a roll of liverwurst,_ Velvet notes. “I think Eleanor’s right, boy,” she says, earning her a head tilt. “I think it’s time you oughta get put on a diet. You're a roly-poly.”

“Hrrm!”

“A person doesn’t have to be explicit with their wording in order for it come across as implicit. Look at you, I don’t even have to go get a turkey for Thanksgiving. I could serve you right up on my plate and not want for anything else.”

Doodle shakes himself  and morphs into a fuzzy, spiky white ball.

“You’re not making your case any better doing that, you know.”

Doodle sniffs and turns his nose up at her. Twitching, like always, although someone—maybe the same person, or somebody else—thought it was a good idea to shove so much crap into their fire pit it’s throwing a smoky veil over this otherwise clear, blue morning sky. It’s been going on for probably over a half hour now and there’s no sign of the home owner letting up on producing more pollution into the air than it’s already worth.

_Damn eco-terrorist,_ she grouses, and sighs. “Hey, at least you have it made out here. I have to go back inside and clean up...Yeah, yeah, I know, Doodle. I don’t know how else I can explain it to you. It’s no different when you  get on the ground and lick your balls  out in public . Me doffing the capitalistic attire  I bought with my own money and wear every day of my life and embracing nature for what it is is very...i-it’s liberating, okay? It’s very liberating.  It feels _good_. And I bet it feels good when you do that, don’t you?”

Doodle opens his mouth and pants, tongue lolling out of one side.

“Why did I even have to bring that up,” Velvet mumbles with a roll of her eyes. “Look, I’m going to go take a shower. Stay out and dry off before you come in.”

“Woof!”

The boombox is still going, the men from Today belting out how they have their eyes on  the girl they want to be sweet on from the speakers.  Velvet stops it, turns the dial back to the left with a click that turns off the stereo, and makes a note to unplug it and put everything away as soon as she’s done and accommodated.

Clothes gathered up in her arms (cell phone cushioned right on top of them), she heads for the bathroom. It’s connected to the bedroom past the living room and down the hallway. Bigger than most one would find in this part of the city, but the shower and bathtub are conjoined and more than long enough to fully stretch out and wide enough to walk around in, so that alone is a considerable plus. There’s even a neat little walk-in closet filled with towels and a robe hanging on a hook, as well, to which Velvet leaves open as she steps back into the bedroom to turn the TV on.

She places the clothes over the rack adjacent to the tub, then takes a towel and adds it next to them. The cell phone goes atop the toilet’s tank. The tie holding her hair together in a tail comes off with a single hand, spilling long black locks down her back. She pulls up the spout on the tub and for a minute allows the water to flow from the faucet, covering the floor mat. Turns the knob above it most of the way to the left, then tugs it toward her.

Water gushes from the shower head, and very quickly steam starts to build up and condensate on the tiles, fog on the medicine cabinet windows and the mirrors above the sink.

Velvet steps in.

The downpour is a blessing, washing the dirt and grime off her. She stays that way: one hand in front of her bracing the wall, head bent low. Her skin stings, but only briefly. The burn soon becomes a soothing balm. (It’s a shame, though; no matter how much time she spends out in the sun, she can never quite get a decent tan. Once a country bumpkin, always a country bumpkin.)

Eyes sliding shut, lips parted, she breathes.

In.

Out.

In.

She holds it in, raises her head and tilts her face up to the water. It drowns the babble of the television, the faint buzz of the lights.

She releases it in a sigh—slow, incremental, expansive.

When she finally drags herself out of the haze and sets about her business, the movements are stiff. Her thighs ache. It’s a strange feeling.

(A good feeling, but she refrains from indulging it. Stops her hand from going any lower and places it against the wall with the other one that's there, presses her nails into the caulk between the tiles until the pinch radiates into the wicks of her nails.)

She comes out almost a half-hour later, fully clothed and robed, hair pillowed on the towel slung over her neck. The TV is at a low volume, displaying what appears to be the end of the weekly weather forecast. It may as well be static snow, or insect droning, or any other insectile metaphor to her ears. Doodle’s on the bed, smack in the middle with paws tucked underneath as if he’s some sort of cat, and looks her way when she exits the bathroom. He seems dry, but that smile could mean anything.

“Doodle,” Velvet says. “Here,” and Doodle gets up and goes over to the edge of the bed for her to card her hand through his fur. Still a bit of dampness around the collar and on the scruff above his paws. At leas the sheets aren’t soaked through, but the few spots that feel misty will dry within the hour. “Not bad...Okay. You can go now.”

Doodle thanks her by licking between her fingers, her knuckles, the palm of her hand. She gives him a good, hard ruffle between his ears and gives him a light nudge on his flank that gets him moving back to his spot. He does several laps around it and pushes the sheets about with his paws and nose until he's satisfied and gets cozy.

Velvet blinks. _Why do you always do that…_

She turns away, regards the vanity by the window. The top is bare, with all the deodorant, lotion, hairspray, and basic personal care and hygiene products tucked together in two rows in a box, with a mirror above it. At one point she’d consider adding another, life-sized one to the back of the door, but by then more than three feet's worth of hair had been cut off once she walked free and the idea of having it that long again soured what little fancy she had in furnishing the house to her liking.

There’s only one brush in the box, and only one comb. Velvet pulls both out one at a time, and stares at the comb as she turns it over. Cheap, plastic, unremarkable. The people crafting these overseas probably broke their backs trying to get these off the presses and onto the shelves of their corporate masters for that extra bit of gald to line their pockets. A very practical item, though; it gets the job done, just like the brush. She skims the pad of her thumb over the teeth. They’re getting dull already, but it makes sense that they would be; although not quite at Rapunzel’s level, her hair is still long, prefers it so, that ends above the small of her back. She will have to go out soon and purchase a new one, wear it down within a few weeks, and repeat the cycle all over again.

She misses the one she had. That had been hand-crafted, was stained and had little princessia flowers carved into the strip with the gold filigree lining the edges. She guessed it had cost a lot of money. It had to have been, because Laphi couldn’t pantomime a brick wall even his life depended on it.

_You have to take better care of yourself, you know! How are you ever gonna get married if you’re always looking like you got dumped in the woods?_

_I’m sixteen! What makes you think I’m going to get married?_

_Even if you don’t, you should at least look somewhat presentable. You never know what’ll happen._

_But I am—_

_If you are, then why do you keep looking at Niko like you got your soul sucked out?_

_B-Because I’m her friend, see! Friends have to look out for each other!_

_Oh Empyreans, not this again—_

_Yes, again!_

_Even a blind person can see better than you._

_You’re ten! You don’t know the first thing about—_

_About what?_

_...About people._

_...People._

_Yes. People._

_Says the person that’s turned down every single date that’s showed the slightest bit interest in her. But hey, you’re right. What would I know?  
_

_Oh be quiet! You’re just a kid. You’re too young to know this stuff._

The jingle of dog tags ring in her ears, a shift of paws on the mattress.

Velvet  doesn’t look at him. She sighs, bends her head down with one hand lifting her hair up underneath from the towel, and begins to brush.

The same s ong and dance plays on TV, day after day after day, with little variance and the occasional inner city shooting that gets highlighted. People dying in their petty skirmishes from faraway countries. Trains getting delayed because of technical malfunctions.  The forest fire in the ruins of ancient Gucchaga are still raging but are slowly being  extinguished, although the implications of long-term damages have yet to be fully accessed.  There are rumors (once again) that the King of Hyland is soon to  abdicate the throne next year,  even though  the chancellor and his men grumbled over  how long it’s taking him given his ailing health.  Some pop star in the Far Continent gets knocked up (and probably strung along into a shotgun wedding before purity culture devours her alive, if they haven’t already, or if it was already planned ahead of time and she thumbed her nose at them).

Really, the only interesting thing is the Bloodwings and the Van Eltia Brotherhood once again engaging a naval battle off the coast of Hellawes against dolphin poachers with enough firepower and steel to sink the _Titanic_ ten times over.

_I wonder if Eleanor’s tried dolphin before,_ Velvet thinks.  _Maybe if I haggle, Tabitha will relent and offer me some…._

Commercials start to play—movies  that are obvious award bait (all live-action, because when has animation that isn’t produced and distributed by foreign and indie studios ever been given a second glance?) ; video games  that’ll put some politician’s knickers in a knot because everyone that isn't his kid is getting shot on a weekly basis ; TV shows that’ll most likely get axed after the first season due to low ratings and toy sales, demographic imbalance brought on by gender, and a controversy that got the armchair soccer moms howling for blood; middle-aged investors insisting that the elderly  call them up so they can reserve plots and headstones in the cemetery before they kick the bucket and their families have to scrap together a GoFundMe to pay their expenses and the medical bills their insurance won't be able to cover.

_Show the weather already._ But she knows what it’s going to be: sunshine.  More sun, more sky, with maybe a wisp or two of clouds to indicate that the world does rotate and time isn’t a fever dream. It’ll be a few more minutes of shooting the breeze and filling up the air time with meteorological babble she doesn’t care much for as much as she has interest in  the morbid fascination that comes with watching hurricanes trawling toward the mainland like some slow, hungry beast out of creation myths.

Still, the voice in the back of her head, the voice that sounds like her sixteen-year-old self that used to go out hunting in the woods for prickleboar meat when none of the discounted prices in the sales papers met her satisfaction, mutters the mantra that’s become familiar and annoyingly persistent in recent years: _Please be nice out, please be nice out, please be nice out—_

The weather comes on. The forecaster shows the map of the country, and then zooms in on the state of Glenwood, all the major and minor towns and cities displayed in satellite imagery. Not so much as a cloud in the sky, and the wind will practically be nonexistent the farther out people are from the Port and the Strait dividing North Hyland from South Rolance. If there is any rain to be had, it won’t be until next week, so it’s best to monitor how much you water any plants or crops you have until then.

_Joke’s on you, Mister Weatherman. I don’t have to rely on computer algorithms and farmers’ almanacs to know how much water I need to use. Can anybody say the same when they look at my garden and say ‘I can do that with all my clothes off, too?’ No. No, I don’t think they can._

_I_ know _they can’t._

He talks about the weather for today, which is—if it isn’t obvious to anyone with flesh and a pair of eyes—hot and sunny, with barely any wind to stave off the heat; and tonight isn’t going to be much better. The fans and the A/C will have to be turned on.

_Now that he mentions it, I wonder if Eleanor’s saving up to buy a new one. It’s not like they’re expensive. It can’t be doing her any good just sitting there; keeping the windows open and the fans going aren’t going to be enough to cool her off. What’s stopping her?_ _Maybe I’ll buy one for her when I get my next paycheck. Maybe take her out shopping on our next day off. All that jean material she’s wearing’s makin’ her look awful flushed. She’ll catch something if she’s not careful._

Velvet looks away from the mirror to glance at the TV. The guy’s still rambling. “Oh come on already, for fuck's sake,” she grumbles, rolling her eyes.

Doodle barks, gets up on all fours.

She turns back to the set, and finally the screen graphics transition from his photogenic mug to the seven-day forecast. “About time.” She sets the brush down on the mantle and puts all her attention on the set.

Monday: Clear.

Tuesday: Clear.

Wednesday: Clear with some clouds.

Thursday: Overcast, slightly cooler.

Friday _—_

“Holy shit,” she sighs, letting out the breath she’s holding, and slumps back in the chair. “Oh thank fuck.”

Friday will be a Good Day. No rain, no cloud, all heat. Pure sun.

Friday will be a Very Good Day.

A snippet of song suddenly sings in her head: _Friday~ Friday~ Gettin’ down on Friday~_

Laughter bubbles in her throat. She swallows it down, tips her head back over the chair. The room feels like it’s going to start spinning. _Do you see this, Eleanor? Are you watching the news right now?_ _It’s seven-eleven. Seven-eleven. Seven-even-fucking-eleven._

_I wonder if she was hoping for rain. Just so that she can put it off for a week and work up the nerve._

This is immediately followed by a thought that makes her clap her hands to her face and push down the keening noise from eking out any more than it already has: _Girl, you can’t run anymore._ _I’_ _m going to see all of it._

_You._

_Me._

_Alone._

_Friday._

_...Friday._

She lets her hands fall away, stares at the ceiling.

_Friday._

She looks at the clock on the wall.  It’s ten o’clock.

T en. With double zeroes.

“Fuck,” she says.

Today is Sunday.

“Fuck,” she says again.

Ten o’clock. This is usually the time where a trashy soap opera plays its cold opening and drags the audience along for  two hours of adultery,  backdoor alley shenanigans  with the mafia , and friends swapping stories of their latest teenage to midlife crisis at a coffee shop while dubstep, Kenny G, and symphonic arrangements of  _The Legend of Zelda_ and  _Skyrim_ play softly in the background.  It’s the hour where cooking shows, reality TV, and children’s programs have the run of the gamut for stay at home parents and young adults bored out of their minds wanting a little bit of sound to fill the emptiness of their homes until the talk shows reign supreme for the better course of the afternoon,  when the news will be on for three hours until the evening entertainment block is on until nightfall, where the news gets recapped again and reruns of old shows and new episodes of recent ones get played at the witching hour when people are asleep and the owls are at awake and at their peak energy.

It’s the time of day where the world keeps on moving.

It’s the time of day where Velvet Crowe has this train of thought as she returns her gaze to the ceiling, the seconds passing by.

_What should I do?_

She assesses herself. Her hair has been combed out of every knot and needs a good brush and will eventually dry. Her clothes are on, free of grass and dirt stains that would have made her throw them through the rinse cycle several times until they’re as clean as the day they came off the production line. Speaking of which, her robe and the towel will have to be added to the pile of laundry that needs to be done  before it gets even bigger and overflows.  The bed is fixed (although Doodle being Doodle, he has to leave hair on the sheets, so a few good rolls with the hand vacuum and the remover will do the trick) and, obviously, the garden has been tended to for the morning.

S he thinks. When was the last time she had thoroughly dusted and cleaned the house out? Last week? Yes. It was last week, and only because she had the day off and it had been raining most of the day. Just the furniture and lamps, the windows and the throw pillows and glass cups, too,  rid of dust and fur, and the  indoor plant sunning by the window got an extra spritz of water and food to keep it chugging along.

_What else?_

_What else…._

The clock ticks. The TV plays.

_I could go back to sleep. Kill some time. It’s not like there’s anything else for me to do._

_Besides, other than the garden, what even interests me? Everything’s the same now. It’s all...fake._

_Just like—_

“I need a drink,” Velvet mutters, and sits up, pushes off the chair to stand. “One sec, boy,” she tells Doodle, peels off the robe and puts it on the hook of the closet door in the bathroom. Grabs her tie and leaves the room as she puts her hair back in its tail.

The water is still on the table outside, sweating in the sun. The bottle she yanked out of the case is proudly standing at the very edge, and, as she picks it up by the neck to turn it over, almost empty. Not even halfway full.

She sighs. “Good enough.”

She heads back inside. Doodle’s on the floor now, pushing his nose against the carpet for reasons only he knows, and picks his head up when she walks in. Velvet unlocks the cellphone she’d placed on the nightstand, thumbs through her text messages with idle care. Rokurou’s most likely running his morning class through hell and back right now. Eizen’s either at work in the museum at Marlind or pulling double duty as security guard at his sister’s school (all the more reason to deck any young man if he so much as tries to make a move on her). Magilou is…doing things that only make sense to someone that has a brain like Magilou’s would. Everyone else is doing their own thing.

Eleanor hasn’t texted since last night.

_Then again, I just talked to her earlier. I bet she’s fine._ “Wonder what she’s doing right now.”

The answer is obvious: she’s helping the children with their lessons in class, learning about the Empyreans and their mandates, the Oracles from ages past in a time when kings and warchiefs walked the earth and the Calamities that locked horns and steel with them every step of the way, the conditions that have to be met in order to get into the Heavenly Steppes and the Seraphim that await them to pass judgment before being allowed past the gates to Paradise, and the dragons that flew across the skies—before the advent of the dirigible and the plane, that drove them back toward the heavens where they would await until the next great war that would herald the End of Days.

Or maybe she’s helping her coworkers set up whatever latest charity or fundraiser for a good cause, like clothes for the homeless population or give Percival the funds to build another library on the North Side that won’t get vandalized, spray-tagged, riddled with bullet holes or—on one occasion—set on fire. Or better security, because the Abbey is long gone and the Platinum Knights, despite their leader’s intentions in wanting to expand, is in another district altogether and don’t have the manpower to provide support.

_Nah, she’s probably wrangling the kids so they don’t kill each other at recess._

A smile, tiny and unbidden, tugs at her lips. Eleanor has always had a fondness for children, and they in turn are fond of her, so it doesn’t come as a surprise to either of them when they get hotheaded and compete for her attention. One in particular—a girl named Moana (“ _Ka_ moana!” she told Velvet once, and insisted on it) _—_ latched onto her, and lets everyone know that if they want to have their turn to play with her then they’re going to wait...which usually resulted in the kids racketing up the noise volume and trying to overthrow her by force like the good little Empyreanites they were. The name sounds familiar, though; Dyle, one of Velvet’s regulars, had mentioned something about him and Medissa looking to adopt from one of the inner city orphanages.

_I bet if Eleanor had the money, she’d adopt the entire state. But then who’d help her?_ Velvet looks up from the phone. _I guess some of the brats could. Kind of tough eking a living out on your own with just one job, but with that many people she’d be more than set for life. All I have to worry about is…_ She looks at Doodle.

Doodle looks back, tail wagging slowly.

“...Yeah.”

His tail quickens.

She ignores him and  goes back to the cell phone.  Clicks on her name and skims through the rows upon rows of text.

V: “Hey”

E: “Hey”

V: “Don’t forget”

E: “Don’t forget what”

V: “You know”

E: “Know what”

V: “You know. That.”

E: “’That’ could imply anything”

V: “Why are you being so evasive? I’m just letting you know”

E: “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re more excited about this than you’re letting on”

V: “Me?”

E: “Yes, you”

V: “Nonsense. I wasn’t the one that stated the terms of condition of our contract”

E: “Contract???”

V: “A woman’s oath is ironclad. Eternal”

E: “Oh ffs”

V: “The Empyreans were watching as you made sealed the deal. Are you going to disappoint them?”

V: “Hey”

V: “Hey”

V: “Eleanor”

V: “Talk to me”

V: “Come on”

V: “Don’t go to bed yet”

V: “It’s too early”

E: “You know”

E: “If you really want me over that badly”

E: “And maybe”

E: “Just maybe”

E: “if you ask very, very nicely”

E: “I can come over right now”

E: “And show you”

E: “REALLY show you”

E: “How dirty a Hume woman’s hands can get”

V: “Oh”

V: “Oh my”

V: “Really?”

V: “You mean it?”

E: “Yes”

E: “I mean it”

E: “All the flowers at the church”

E: “And all the flowers I have at home”

E: “And all the flowers in the city”

E: “Will pale in comparison the second I get my hands on yours”

E: “And when I do”

E: “They will bloom unlike anything you will have ever seen or felt in your entire life”

E: “And you are going to L I K E I T”

V: “Wow”

V: “WOW”

V: “You’re serious”

E: “Yes”

V: “VERY serious”

E: “I am”

V: “Whoa”

V: “Girl”

V: “You nasty”

E: “Excuse me”

V: “So nasty”

V: “I almost can’t believe”

V: “This is the same girl I went to school with”

V: “And followed the Scriptures to the letter every Sunday morning”

V: “So there is a demon in you, after all”

V: “I think I’m going to faint. Call 911”

E: “Fuck you”

E: “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on”

V: “Please take good care of Doodle for me”

E: “Don’t you dare”

E: “Don’t you dare faint on me”

E: “I am coming over”

E: “As per the conditions we’ve set”

V: “But you’re a demon now. You can break the rules. Nothing can hold you back now”

E: “You’re right”

E: “Demons can be so cruel”

E: “If I am a demon, then so be it”

E: “You are going to wait”

E: “And you will suffer for it”

E: “You’ll wish you’d set the date sooner”

V: “Oh my”

E: “Oh yes”

V: “You mean it”

E: “If I’m a liar, then may my mother up in heaven cast me in shame and the Empyreans strike me down”

V: “Shit”

V: “Well then”

V: “I wish you all the best”

E: “Excuse me wtf”

E: “I’m not the one that’s going on about it every time you see me!”

E: “Velvet”

E: “V E L V E T”

E: “VELVET CROWE”

E: “HEY”

She kept spamming her after that, and for an hour the phone had been quiet. Then, as Velvet recalls, as the night wore on it went off again, and from there they talked about the office Eleanor worked at, and the cars Velvet worked on, and taking Doodle to the groomers to get his nails done, and the strange rash of plastic flamingo sightings that are cropping up all over Glenwood (and perhaps beyond, although reports have varied) that’s been making the rounds on the news.

Just another day.

Velvet throws the sheets back, plops herself down on the bed, and kicks back. One leg thrown over the other, water bottle in hand, damp hair sticking to her neck.

She takes a perfunctory sip. The hint of lemon is light, teasing, glides smooth down her throat.

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” Velvet mumbles in a tuneless, singsong lilt. “Then you put some ice in it. Then you put in the fridge and let it sit for an hour. Take it out, let it sit awhile...and have a glass. Bon appetite. Itadakimasu. Have a pleasant day.” Another sip, swallowing quiet laughter fake and hollow.

“Good news for us that I have don’t drink, boy,” she tells Doodle, gesturing the upraised bottle at him. “I don’t know what I’d do if I did.” He cocks his head, ears flickering backward and forward, forward and back. He stretches his front paws out, nails stretching against the carpet.

He smiles, tail wagging, ears relaxed.

“Good news for everyone,” she adds, and rests her head back against the headboard. She nestles the bottle in the space between her legs.

S ighs, and stares at the ceiling. The noise of the TV, the ticking of the clock, the chirping of birds and the buzzing of insects and the faint roar of traffic and the backfiring muffler and the hammering of nails on a rooftop and the trundling of a garage door opening—all of it fades away. There is no sun, no sky, no cloud. There have to be a hundred thousand specks and dots up there.

Velvet doesn’t know how much time passes, despite the vague awareness of everything that goes on around her. The world, as it stands now, turns without her. The world, for all she knows, doesn’t care if she doesn’t notice. People are going to be people. They’re going to be busy, and there are only two things that people are capable of doing, and that’s either hurting or nurturing; and there’s plenty of hurting that’s been going around. People have been hurting for millennia, have probably been hurting since well before Shepherd Siegfried marked the land that would be the paradise for humanity and malakhim and let them prosper from the flames of war that up until then the world had only known. But if such a paradise existed then it was a long, long time ago, time beyond beyond, and despite the goodwill  and honest hearts the kind and the true possess and seek to spread it still isn’t enough to curb the violence and lust and anger in man nor in the hearts of the malakhim that have all but made themselves scarce in recent years—back to the high mountains, the low hills, the  quiet rivers and the seas and the heat of the sun in the trees and the fires of the earth far to the south where they are most closest to  nature, away from the destructive potential of technology and the malevolence born from man’s hubris.

_It will never be enough,_ he told her. Once. She had found him standing in front of the tall, ceiling-high windows, back turned to her, gazing out over the metropolitan minotaur’s maze that is Pendrago. Still with the cloak draped over his bum arm,  the sword still strapped to his hip that Claudin once wore when he’d been alive and in office—the same sword that, by all accounts, should’ve been hanging on the wall of his chambers or locked in a glass cabinet. Gun control is strict in Midgand, but nothing was (and still hasn’t been) done to restrict the sales of sharp, deadly weapons that manage to slip through the cracks and exchange hands. He could still swing it, still put down a feral prickleboar or a gangbanger just by the lightness of his feet and the flow of his body. Even in that moment, stone-faced and tense, he radiated strength. Charisma.

Power.

_For so long as malevolence dwells in the hearts of man, there will be no saving this country. No saving mankind._ And he did not turn around  and grandstand , did not so much as look at her  reflection in the window.  But standing that far away from him, every scar aching at the sight of him, the pistol hot in her bleeding hand,  she could feel the chill in his voice, his eyes, the weight he put in his feet.

_We are the worst thing to have ever happened to this world. Humanity as a species does not nurture; it propagates. No modern medicine or psychology will save it from the pain we have caused it._

_But I am the peoples’ Shepherd. I am but a simple Oracle. I see what the sheep do not—what they cannot._

_Pendrago is big, but at the end of the day it’s just another city. Another plot of land built by man, run by man, and inhabited by man, inherited off the backs of their fellow brother and the tools they brandished. Every road you tread upon with your own two feet, every stream you ride on a boat, every cloud you pass on a plane—they were never ours. We conquered them the same way we’ve conquered people._

_But that’s not why you’re here. No. I didn’t think so. And even if you were, what difference will it make? I told you before this will be my sin to bear: one town, one city, at a time. It’s a slow war, but what isn’t? Humanity needs a leader that will not kowtow under pressure, a leader that is strong of mind and strong of heart._

_Do you dare get in the way of that?_

_Is it so wrong to want to save the world from malevolence?_

_No,_ Velvet thinks, eyes sliding shut.  _No, it wasn’t, Arthur._

_You just shouldn’t have had to take everything away from me to do that._

_You and him._

_Just why?_

_Why…_

Velvet opens her eyes, half-mast, and takes a long, slow sweep of her room. She thinks about her motorcycle, sitting out in the sun in the driveway. She thinks about the case of water collecting condensation. She thinks about the garden, her plants and her crops and her flowers, damp with water. She thinks about her job at the auto repair shop and of the customers that ask where she’s at when they don’t see her first thing as they walk through the door. She thinks about the mall she goes to, of all the shops she strolls by and the items they have on display when she browses them before moving on to the next area. She thinks about the kids at the church, the few times she’s gone to visit, and the way their faces light up when they see her and clamor around her for piggyback rides or bench-press as many of them as she can, at the way Kamoana’s voice hitches on a whine when she insists that everyone calls her _Ka_ moana because it’s a family tradition from where her family came from in the Southgand. She thinks about Doodle, with his long nails and fluffy white coat that gets on everything of every place conceivable under the sun, and the perpetual smile he wears that melts even the coldest of hearts. She thinks about the long stretches she rides on her days off, the sands of the beaches and the tide that rolls in, cold wind fingering through her hair and salt on her tongue. She thinks about the Bloodwings, and the Van Eltia Brotherhood, patrolling the waters, monitoring the shadows of the inner city, controlling the markets, ending lives, sweeping messes under the carpet or airing them out for all the world to see before the next big story breaks and all is forgotten except on internet forums and clandestine groups with grudges too heavy and too bloody to ignore. She thinks about Grimoirh, leaning over the counter to get a better look at her—handcuffed and stuffed into a jumpsuit hanging off her body—and her mouth to the phone, telling her that if Velvet follows exactly what she has planned, what Tabitha passed along to her, then she won’t have to spend the rest of her life rotting away in a cell of a prison facility that’s underfunded, understaffed, and notoriously recidivist, that she can put her somewhere nicer under Bloodwing jurisdiction that won’t paint a fucking huge target on her back wherever she goes. She thinks about Tabitha at the tavern, serving her lemon tea with honey even though, at the time, she could barely taste it let alone be bothered to want to have any, and the avian calculation that watched her behind the warm, grandmotherly veneer she greets everyone with—the hint of pity and outrage lurking therein. She thinks about all the faces she’s seen in those years that have looked back at her: most in anger, but all frozen in that same mask when the color is gone and the light fades from their eyes. She thinks how hot it felt when the bullet went through, how sharp and sudden the blade felt as it punched into her chest, how much it felt as though her arm went through a paper shredder when she moved it.

She thinks about the sunlight, soft and warm through the window of the cell, and the moonlight thereafter. How sweet that first breath of air tasted as she was led out the back of the facility, cuffs off and in clothes that still felt too large on her person. How high and the grass was, how yellowed and stringy, and the thought that clicked into her head, as though a switch had been flicked on, that something had to be done—that this was the one place she would conquer and claim for herself.

She thinks about Eleanor, walking away from her like a technicolor dream. The curve of her body on the living room floor, and the sliver of sun-warmed skin above the belt of her jeans. The indignation on her face as she falls hook, line, and sinker for those thinly-veiled innuendos and gets close, close, and smells the perfume on her neck, sees the half-moon artistry of her nails on slender fingers calloused from pole vaulting in high school, and the fall of her hair that frames her round face, her pink lips. The heightened, attentive looks she sends her way when she sees her walking out the door, Doodle leading at the front, dressed in those sleeveless shirts with the plunging necklines and all those pants that hug her waist and all those shorts that show all that leg and the muscle that flexes with each taken step—looks that Eleanor tries, and fails, to be discreet much less be subtle about.

She thinks about all the honeyed words she speaks to her, the teasing and the half-serious invitations.

_You can make it yours,_ she had thought.

She thinks about Laphi, bedridden and tired, but not too tired to spit fire every chance he could get.

_You have to take better care of yourself, you know! How are you ever gonna get married if you’re always looking like you got dumped in the woods?_

She thinks about Arthur, on his back, blood flecked on his lips, the stain growing on his front.

_We are the same, you and I. Remember that, when you look in the mirror next time._

S he closes her eyes shut and slides down the bed until she’s fully prostrate  on her back , a sound escaping her that’s a mix between a sigh and a moan.

_Why am I here?_

_Why do I have this?_

_I shouldn’t._

_I don’t._

_I—_

She growls and digs the heels of her hands into her eyes.

“Idiot,” she chokes. “Fucking idiot. It’s over. It’s over.”

_It’s all over._

“Stop it.”

_Let it go._

She removes her hands, throws them away from her face. Stares at the ceiling. The ceiling stares back.

Another sigh.

She stretches her legs out all the way, burrows her back into the mattress until she gets comfortable and settles. She turns her head sideways and looks at the clock.

It’s almost a quarter to eleven.

_What time did she say she was getting out again? One?_

“Shit.” She raps the back of her head softly against the pillow. “Goddammit.”

_I’m bored._

_So fucking bored._

_I wish it was Friday already._

_What day is it again? Sunday?_

_God fucking...ugh._

_So bored._

_So damn bored. What should I even do?_

“Guess I’ll just watch TV,” she says, more to herself than to Doodle. His tags jingle as he moves over to her side of the bed where she can see him, does his rounds over his spot, and folds down on all fours with a pleased grunt. He gives her a quizzical look.

“Just leave it on. Maybe something good might come on.”

DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT?

_Not really,_ she wants to tell him. Instead she stretches her arms out above her head, issues a gargantuan yawn, and flops once more against the bed.  _Time, you are a cruel mistress. Hurry the hell up. I have places I gotta be._

“Two more hours to go. Just two….” She trails off, closes her eyes. More commercials, signifying the interlude of another soap opera that’ll premiere in a couple minutes or so.

“Woof?” Doodle chuffs.

“I’m not gonna fall asleep. I’m not tired.”

_I wish it was Friday._

_Friday can’t come soon enough._

_I wonder if Eleanor still plans to chicken out._

_I hope not. That wouldn’t be very fun._

_Maybe...if she’s up for it...we can do more._

_Doesn’t have to be a weekly thing. It can just be...every other day._

_Just get her mind off things. I bet all that work at the office is a lot of hassle. And I guess the church, too._

_Yeah._

_Yeah._

_That sounds like a good idea._

_That sounds like—_

The doorknob, turning, and the door, opening.

_What’s that?_

Velvet keeps her eyes closed and wills her body to still, her breathing to slow. She listens, and the first thing she hears is:

Silence. The clock is ticking, but the second-hand has always been so quiet as to be on the border of human hearing. No one’s blasting music or fixing their rooftops or (or, nothing, because that’s a good thing) burning rubber in a  contest to see who can blow their engines up but really just to see who has the biggest dick this side of Pendrago.

It is a little...warm in here.

_I should put the fans on, I’m baking in here._

Velvet begins to push up,  only to pause.

Once in a while, not very often but enough to dull her senses in those quiet moments alone, she  will ask herself how much, if at all, of Artorius’s influence lives on.  Once a story that had captivated the nation , it has now since become another footnote in in the city’s history books that’s all but become forgotten to the masses. But no one had seen her deal the killing blow, and the internet and television are now the central courts of public opinion. Someone—somebody—is going to beholden to remember and carry on his mission and his legacy. They would be apt to make anyone’s life, anyone that was complicit in their Shepherd’s death and their empire’s downfall, hell,  and draw it out as long as possible. Yet aside from the Bloodwings and the Van Eltia Brotherhood there’s barely anyone left in her life they could take their grief and anger out on:

Her parents, dead before she could fully establish the bond between them from an automobile crash.

Her sister, sold out by the townspeople she called friends for their own protection and dead from a fall and broken neck deemed an accident by the coroner.

L aphicet, dead from complications with the surgery that, had doctors reacted more quickly, would have saved his life (or perhaps, maybe, make it that much harder than it already was).

The only one left they could go after is little Maotelus, Laphicet the Second...but the body had never been found, all the proof that could've determined his survival burned and then washed away in the riot that saw Aball and all her people crumble. No matter how much they searched, the crews could not find him. He was as good as dead.

_Now...who would be shitty enough to make themselves known at this hour. Whoever it is, they’d at least have the decency to be quiet._

She considers her options. There’s the water bottle, but she doesn’t feel it between her legs anymore; she must’ve knocked it over without her noticing. There’s a combat knife under the mattress, but it’s dull and needs to be sharpened (maybe see if she can buy one off Eizen or Dyle, if they’re available, or if Rokurou has a tantou from his collection he can spare her). There’s the cell phone, too, but like hell she’s lugging it at somebody; that shit costs money.

And then there’s Doodle.

Smiling, happy, friendly Doodle that wags his tail at everybody, gets a treat when he performs a trick for every single command they give him, and loves belly rubs when he flops himself on his back and wins them over by sheer cuteness.

_...Nah._

She doesn’t hear his tags, the air displaced from his tail, or his barking. So that meant he’ s  disappeared to who knows where the hell he goes.

That leaves just her bare hands—hands that have snapped, broken, cut, bent, and strangled all across Midgand  to the skyscraper Artorius’s cult affectionately dubbed his Throne . She considers waiting, feigning sleep, stilling her breath, and anticipate the moment when the weight is settled on top of her and draws the blade from their sheath, or grasp her neck with a jolt of lightning and a force like earth that will take her breath away.  In which case, if that should happen, she’d simply have to be faster: get her legs around them, flip them around, get on top, and save her knife the trouble of making the bed blood-free.

L ike right now, the weight setting down almost right on top of her.

_That’s right, you bastard. Make yourself comfortable; it’s going to be the last thing you’ll ever savor._

A hand, soft and feather-light, touches her stomach and slowly, gently, slides underneath the T-shirt. Stops, fingers splayed, palm hot beneath her skin.  Nails, faintly scraping.

Her breath catches.  _Ah, one of those types, huh? Go on. Go on, asshole. Get yerself a taste of paradise before I send you straight to hell._

_Savor it a little more…_

_Because if you haven’t heard about waking the sleeping giant by now...well, you’ll find out in—_

The hand dips and clinches around the hem of her jeans. Deft fingers undo the button, grab the zipper, and pull down.

Velvet makes a show of licking her lips. Swallows thickly, throat too dry. She bites back the pant that wants to come out _._

_No._

_No no no no. No. No._

_Not yet._

_Not yet._

_Wait for it._

_Wait for it…._

“Hey, Velvet.”

“Hey, Eleanor,” Velvet says, in a voice hoarse with sleep, and moves to turn her head to the side and bury it in the pillow. Relaxes at the sound of her voice and arches her hips a little higher and feels her head get a little lighter, her cheeks a little warmer, at the embers that stir within her loins as her thighs brush up against the woman’s.

Velvet’s eyes snap open. “Eleanor?!” she exclaims, and instead of coming out shocked and angered it’s high and choked and cracks on every syllable.

Her jaw drops.

Eleanor is sitting on top of her, her cardigan off her shoulders and hanging loosely in a bunch around her arms. She’s barefoot. Her shirt’s untucked and riding up her midriff, showing her flat, toned stomach. She’s fondling her own breast in what looks like a death grip. Her fucking fly is open, revealing _—_

_RED!_ Rokurou’s voice screeches at her, fourteen-years-old and breaking like shattered glass in her ears.  _Hot dog, Velvet, she’s wearing red! Pity it ain't black, but! It's red! And you know what that means!_

_...Um, I don't?_

_GIRL! How many times do I gotta tell ya?! What part of ‘a woman in red wants the bed’ don’tcha understand?!_

Velvet looks at Eleanor. She licks her lips.

Eleanor slides her tongue out and slides it up across her upper lip down her lower lip in one smooth, fluid glide, and grins. “That’s me,” she says.

_The hell you are!_ Velvet reels. That’s not the voice of a woman who’s just walked into her home unannounced for a cup of tea and telling her how her day at the church went. That’s the voice of a woman, low and sultry and rough around the edges, that’s ready to Get Down _—all_ The Way Down. It’s the kind of voice she can’t imagine Eleanor having the capacity to speak in without  wanting to will herself out of existence in embarrassment.

And those eyes. Empyreans wept and drowned, she’s seen those eyes before. Those are the eyes of a  _predator_ . They’re the same eyes Velvet’s had on her, from people  in the bars and in the dark crevices of alleyways and subway stations who got a nice look at a piece of meat and couldn’t keep it in their pants  long enough to test their luck and try to overcome her. Those are the eyes that promise a whole new world.

Putting those together, and it’s like looking not at Eleanor Hume but a goddamn shark. Sharks, however, aren’t soft-hearted maidens that  reject every man that’s  expressed his interest in her or,  on more than one occasion and if he’s feeling particularly bold, offered his hand in marriage at first sight. Sharks don’t drop whatever they’re doing to help some old lady cross the street, get Fluffy the cat out of the tree he climbed in pursuit of a bird, or make herself the big sister for all the little monsters at church because the marms are too busy writing up homework assignments. But most of all, sharks don’t burst into tears at everything that might make the slightest emotional impact on her  no matter if it’s good or bad.

I f Velvet had to guess, Eleanor coming onto her, doing what she’s doing, right now, would most likely see her floored in a sobbing mess.

There are no such tears here. Only a wicked, steely light  more appropriate on a demon than an angel.

I t takes her a few moment to get her mouth working, and several more to get the words out. “How did you get in here?”

“The doormat key.”

“Key? What key _—_ ”

Eleanor reaches into her blouse, fishes  the key out dangling on its ring from between her breasts, and casually flicks it onto the floor with a devious smirk.

Velvet stares, blinking dumbly. “Ah,” she croaks. “That.” She clears her throat. “Y-You’re supposed to be at work.”

“I skipped it.”

“Skipped it? But why _—_ ”

“Because I wanted to surprise you.”

“Surprise me? Is it after one already?”

“So much after!” Eleanor proclaims with prideful joy. “The night’s all ours.”

“I’m sorry... _Night?_ ”

“Take a look.” Eleanor indicates the window with a tip of her head.

Velvet looks.

It’s pitch black outside, the glow of the sodium lamp a distant, fairy tale glow on the panes.  Not only that, but the TV’s at so low a volume that it may as well be mute, and the lamp is on, basking the room in a burnished amber light  that turns Eleanor’s skin into fine wine.

“What the fuck,” Velvet breathes in disbelief. Then, a little more loudly, “I just closed my eyes for a minute. I couldn’t have slept for _—_ ”

“Fourteen hours?”

“Yes!”

“Those make for the best surprises~ Waking up. Alone. Unaware. The world moving ever onwards...except for us.” Laughter, bubbling low and sweet. “Just. Us.” She moves the hand that’s off Velvet’s fly and drags it back up underneath her shirt, pressing lightly, firmly.

Velvet gasps,  muscles clenching under her touch. She swallows again and tries not to squirm. “That...That can be taken out of context, you know.”

“Velvet. You wound me. Do I look like a person that would ever do that?”

“Oh. Oh no, no. You don’t. N-Not at all. But you, uh. You just popped over all of a sudden. Climbed on top of me. Woke me up, and.” She pauses, licks her lips. (Where the fuck did that water bottle go to?) “And.”

“And...?”

“And, uh.” Velvet nods. “You surprised me. You really...really...surprised me. You got me.” She clears her throat again and shifts as much as the weight will allow her (and it’s a chore, such a damn chore, thighs swollen and legs leaden, the room’s an inferno and it feels like her heart’s sitting right on the tip of her tongue). “I’d never expected you to do that,” she adds, more confidently. “G-Good job.”

“Why thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, uh, since you're here, and I think we both know why, I’d like to get out of bed and get the tools ready, if you don’t mind _—_ ”

“I’m not here for the garden.”

“...What?”

"I'm not here for the garden."

"Then...Then what could you be here for?"

“I came,” Eleanor says, “to give you a good time.” She peels off the cardigan the rest of the way, inch by inch, biceps flexing, and when it’s in her hand she brings it around to the front and, just like with the keys, tosses it to the side. She raises her other hand and, with a bit of finagling, undoes the top of her blouse one button at a time.

V elvet’s eyes follow. Every detail is magnified tenfold: the crescent of her nails, the callouses on her fingers and the deftness in which she moves the buttons through the cut in the placket, the sweat beading the hollow of her throat  and the swell of her cleavage rising and falling with each panted breath  that rasps loud, loud, in her ear, overtaking the silence in the room that had once seemed gargantuan, overwhelming. Her chest tightens at the touch that glides up, up her abdomen, palm pressing down harder, feeling every ridge, every line, every shape of muscle that coils  around it, molds to it, until it stops right at the underside  of her breasts. Lingers, fingertips barely touching.  Velvet stares past Eleanor, past the walls, the ceiling; head craned back into the pillow, panting shallow.

The hand climbs up, caresses them gently, pads applying pressure. Velvet makes a sound in her throat, caught between a hiss and a moan. She reaches around, grabs Eleanor by the buttocks in greedy handfuls and arches her back, rolls her hips  up and feels Eleanor push back down.

T he moan that comes out of  her is high, sweet, throaty, and it knocks Velvet’s equilibrium more off-kilter, inflates her world in fire.  She thrusts up a second time  and doesn’t quite stop the reedy whine coming out of her.

Then it’s gone.  Eleanor’s hand pulls out  from Velvet’s shirt, leaving  her skin feeling hot, tempered,  and empty.  Velvet cracks her eyes open, gasping, and stops, watches with bated breath as  Eleanor grabs the hem of her shirt and slowly, slowly pulls it up over her head. Power—lean, athletic power—causes her  diaphragm to tense and highlights the  cut of her  abdomen: not as sharp or as broad as  Velvet’s but lithe, supple; power  courses beneath her skin like a river, accentuated by the marriage of light and shadow thrown off by the lamp.  The downturn of her face, before it’s briefly hidden away, is  calm,  lashes half-mast, lips parted.

T hen it’s up, off, and thrown to the side.  Eleanor pushes her bangs back, cards her fingers through her scalp and fluffs her hair pooled around her neck. “ Much better. Well, what do you think?  Did that do the trick?”

Velvet says nothing. All her attention, all her bodily desire, is on her chest: good-sized breasts, not too big but not too small. Round things that could fit right and snug in the palm of her hands. And her bra—by the Empyreans and all that is blessed in holy light—her bra is _—_

_RED!!!_ Rokurou’s voice blares in the farthest, darkest corner of her mind.  _IT’S FUCKING REDDDD! GIIIIIIRL!_

_—_ so very, very red, more of an aged, burgundy wine than the blaring monstrosity that is fire-engine red. It fits on her like a second skin, wraps around her in a thick black band fringed with lace, the straps thin and taut over her shoulders. But what draws Velvet is the small, rectangular flap that stretches from one cup to the other just below the rise of her breasts; she can tell how much tougher it looks compared to the silk and the lace.

Velvet can tell what it’s hiding. They’re large scars, ugly scars, but what scar isn’t? Every scar has a story: small ones, big ones, novels that fade over time and epics that last into eternity. Comedy, tragedy—there is no difference; one can be found among the other. They can be found in both. But scars make the people; to go through life without them is not a life worth living. It would not be a life without growth.

It goes without saying how much more leaden, how much hotter her core gets the longer she looks. The urge is strong, rising from the depths of her thought like a leviathan. The urge to rise up (because height differences are a fucking dream come true), tear that wretched cloth in two, and _—_

And.

Velvet bites her tongue. She licks dry lips, swallows around a dry throat, and releases a breath that comes out hard and shaky. She wrenches her gaze away and puts her head down, looks away, anywhere. “Wooo…. Wow…u-um….”

“Oh yes,” Eleanor declares, laughter trailing off. “Oh _yes_ ,” she purrs, smiling triumphantly. “I do believe it did. Look how happy you are.” She puts her hands on either side of Velvet’s head and leans over her. Closer and closer, until her hair tickles Velvet’s cheeks, shields her from the world like a red curtain, and she can feel the warm breath on her face. She looks into Eleanor’s eyes. They are dark, intense. Her pupils, blown black. The reflections of the lamplight therein are like twin stars out on an open sea. On her lips, a hint of gloss accentuating their smoothness, their rosiness.

“I wasn’t lying, you know,” she rasps. “I really do want to show you just how good I am with my hands. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to make your garden look pretty. But you... _you_. There’s just so much I want to do for you. To _you_.”

One hand comes up to the side of Velvet’s right temple and, with the barest kiss of nails and fingertips, traces down from her cheekbone to her jawline in one languid crawl.

“I’ve seen the way you look at me. The way you dress. You’re quite the little succubus when you think no one’s paying attention, aren’t you? Oh yes. Don’t think I didn’t notice even for a moment. You’re as horny as they come, you naughty little girl.”

It continues, follows the curve of her chin and brushes the underside, goes further south over the column of her throat and Adam's apple, the space between her clavicles, and spreads her fingers as far as they can go down the plain of her chest, up and over the crest. Velvet lays there, wide-eyed but relaxed, breath soft and quiet, and allows herself to push her belly up against Eleanor’s palm as it rakes across it.

“Oh, but I’m getting ahead of myself. This isn’t exactly proper decorum, is it?” Eleanor frowns, sighs, and settles her hand over one hip, just above the flap of Velvet’s fly, her thumb snug against the bone that elicits lightning strikes in her gut and electrical currents through her thighs. “I want this, Velvet. I’ve wanted this since the day I walked into your garden and saw God…no, since before that. So much longer before that! Right before graduation when I looked at you and thought you were the one I might get to spend the rest of my life with.

“But I need to know, Velvet: do you...do you want this? Will you make love with me?

“M...Make love?”

“Yes. You and me, together, with only the stars as our witness.”

“But...you always told me you’d wait. That you’d have to know for sure before _—_ ”

“Marriage? Yeah. I did say that, didn’t I? But...I don’t know. Times change. People change. And...even if I knew, I’m not sure.” A press of her lips, and then the sensation of her hand letting go and easing Velvet’s thigh apart with a heavy, restrained ache. “I’m not sure I want to _wait anymore_ ,” she growls. “But I will. I’ll wait. Just say the word; I’ll follow your order to the letter until the day I _die_.”

“Whoa. Hey. Hey now. Whoa,” Velvet sputters. “You...You don’t have to go that far!”

Eleanor pokes her tongue out and slides it across her upper lip. “No. I don’t. But I will.”

“You wouldn’t make it!”

“No. I wouldn’t. I’d sooner combust before I die a natural death. But for you, I’d wait. For you, I’ll endure. For you, I’ll do anything. So long as you’re happy.” Eleanor tightens her grip of the pillow with one hand and with the other pries her thigh wider, and then rests it on her upper calf below the bend of her knee.

Then she bends forward until she’s almost lying on top of Velvet and presses a kiss, full and sweet and chaste, with a nip of teeth, to the swell of her left breast, over her heart. “Make me yours.”

_Yours,_ Velvet echoes, and the heat is too much. It’s a chore she can even more her legs without going off, but she does. She moves her left leg, the one Eleanor doesn’t have a hold on, wider,  and h er other leg, though—her right leg manages to rotate and hook around  the back of Eleanor’s knees and stretches out in the space between her legs  where it’s cooler. More comfortable, like two puzzle pieces fitting together.  S he sighs and lets her lashes fall shut, relishing the feeling of Eleanor’s warm cheek and her hair against her skin.

_Mine_ .

Her throat gets tight. The first pinpricks of fire begin to smolder behind her eyes that she dashes away with a harsh clench that only serves to make her dizzier and weightless.

_Mine._

“I,” she starts, tentatively, and pauses. Searches for words that churn at light-speed in her mind but get lodged in her mouth even as they form. Eleanor shifts to look up at her, sleepy and curious, brimming with love, the heat of her gaze embers.

One look. One look is all it will take, and she will come undone. No amount of dexterity from her hands will be so strong and blinding as the eroticism exuding from her neighbor, her childhood friend, her…

She’s not sure how to finish that sentence. She leaves it at that and focuses on formulating her thoughts together. “I,” she begins again. “I would like to…more than anything in the world...make you happy. I would,” she stops, swallows hard, and continues in as steady a voice as possible, “I would want nothing more than to _be_ happy. It’s just that...everything so far, that I’ve been experiencing these past few years, feels so fake. I don’t feel real. Nothing feels real. Honestly, I don’t know why I’m still alive. What have I done with my life that makes me think I deserve to live? If I had the choice, I think I’d have preferred to stay locked away in prison forever. Just...let everyone forget I ever existed.

“But you…you stuck around. You got involved...because of me. Because of what those bastards did to you and your mother. You stayed after all that, even though you could’ve left at any time. Even though I...I treated you like trash.” She takes a moment to breathe, recompose herself, not succumb. She lifts a hand and, after a brief pause, nestles it atop Eleanor’s head and runs her hand through her hair. Massaging her nails over her scalp elicits a pleasant hum that makes her nuzzle into her chest and hold onto her. She doesn’t protest, doesn’t insist she continue. She lays there, waiting, listening.

Surely Eleanor can hear how fast her heart’s pounding.

Surely she must feel the same way. How loosely she’s hanging on the wire, how much of that power is thrumming throughout her body and in her grasp, the burning need between her legs, ready to let go the instant the command is spoken.

Velvet sucks in another breath and for the next few minutes tries to articulate her thoughts. Yet there’s too much on her mind, too many faces and memories running amok all at once, too much noise being raised. So she detaches from them all,  drifts toward reality, and the exhale that’s released is much more  stable. “I’m sorry, Eleanor. For all that I’ve done to you. I don’t...I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve anyone or anything, really. But you’re right: I’ve been trying to get your attention by acting like a starved peacock with all that provocative clothing and the fancy talk and, well, I guess the dog, too. We both like dogs, yeah?  But, uh, yeah. Yeah. That’s what I’ve been doing. And, truth be told, I’m not sure when I started doing it. When I...I started thinking of you as some thing ...more.  Although I’m not sure what you see in me. But then again, I’m sure people would say the same about me toward you.

“But you gave me another chance. You gave it to me when I probably shouldn’t have. So...I think that is reason enough to believe that’s when things were changing. That maybe after all the shit that’s happened to me...maybe I have something special, after all. A reason to live again, and not feel ashamed for it.

“So...yes, Eleanor. I want this,” Velvet says, and removes her hand from Eleanor’s head when she looks up at her. “I want...I want to make love to you…if you’ll have me.” A pout. “Won’t you?”

T his earns her a smile, gentle and kind, that causes something inside her to flutter. Then Eleanor laughs and pushes up off Velvet until she’s towering over her again, leaning back on her heels. “Of course I will have you. No one interests me the way you do. They don't speak as eloquently as you do, either. I never took you as someone who makes long speeches.”

“Neither did I.”

“I like it.”

“That’s because you’re my only audience.”

“And I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

“Mmm...same.”

“So...Are you ready? Do you need time?” 

“Well. Um. See. I’m not sure. I mean...I want this. I want to do it. There’s just one problem.”

“What's that?”

“Well. It’s just that. You...and me. We’re not, um.” Velvet sighs. “Look. We’re virgins.”

T he look she gives her goes from zero to  _are you for fucking real_ ,  but Eleanor scoffs and smirks. “Not for long.”

“Well I-I! I know that! It’s just that. Well. It’s not really going to be like the movies, is it?”

“Oh, it will be.”

“But not now.”

“I can most certainly try.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. At least, um, not right now.”

“I can take it slow then,” Eleanor says, massaging a thumb over the soft meat of Velvet’s hip in small circles. “ _Real_ slow.”

Velvet squirms, equal parts aroused and ticklish. “A-ah. D-Define slow.”

“Remember when I played guitar?”

“Y-Yeah.”

“Think that kind of slow. The way your fingers strum each string as you fine-tune them. One. By. One. Until you get the pegs tight just the way you like.” Eleanor leans over and nuzzles her cheek into the backside of Velvet’s knee, presses a kiss to it. “And then you play...to your heart’s content.” She hums, deep and sonorous that sends shivers up Velvet’s spine. “Wouldn’t you like that?”

“That...That would be nice,” Velvet says. “But how slow are we talking?”

“Hmm. Put it to you this way: you ever hear the phrase ‘your body is a temple’?”

“Mm, yeah.”

“Well, it is. But your body is also an instrument. You have to take care of them. Be kind to them. Love then as much as you may hate them. Do that, and you will find and claim your self-worth. Do that, and you will have your worshipers: the gentle, the meek. The most faithful. Through them, they will fill your halls with the most wonderful music.” She smiles, all teeth and sin. “I bet I can make you scream.”

Velvet scoffs. “You? Make  _me_ scream? I dunno if you recall, Eleanor, but there’s a reason why the underworld,  to this day, still calls me the Howling Calamit y. The Lord of Lords of Calamity!  You’re going to have your work cut out for you if you think I’m going to crumble at the first touch _—_ ”

Her mind blanks. The world turns white.  Her heart jerks.  Her breathing stops.

For a split second, she is rendered clinically dead. Not by  a sudden, massive stroke, nor a fatal heart attack, nor out of literal embarrassment.

The silence is abrupt, almost jarring...but it’s still. Serene, like a pond before dawn.

It’s so...heavenly.

“Well! Would you look at this!” Eleanor’s voice exclaims, and it’s enough to drag Velvet out of her stupor to look dumbly at the hand down her pants, palm pressed right up against her pubis. “Your cup is running over!”

“I just,” Velvet pants, and focuses all her willpower on keeping herself still from breathing let alone moving. “...I-I-I just took a shower.”

“Oh? Is that so?”

“Y-Yes it’s so!”

“Really?”

“Y-Yes r-really!”

“For me?”

“You _know why_.”

“If this is what you’re like after a shower...I wonder how you’ll be before it.” She sits up, applying pressure to her mound, and with her other hand reaches into the folds of her bra’s cups.  


W hen it comes back out, Velvet’s eyes fly open. It’s small, square, and wrapped in plastic.  _My gods...Is that…?_

Eleanor puts the perforated edges up to her mouth and licks it. “Let’s find out~”

Then she bites  on it with her teeth and tears it open .

* * *

“ _Ohhhhh shiiiiit!_ ” Velvet yells, lunging up from the bed. Chest heaving, sweat pasting her hair to her neck in a ropy scarf, eyes wild as they dart across the room. It’s filled with sunlight instead of moonlight, the TV is just as incoherent, and the shadows stretch a little longer now than they did before.

The clock on the wall reads a quarter after one.

“Oh my gods,” Velvet says, putting a hand over her heart. “Oh my gods….” She looks herself over: clothes rumpled, hair a mess, the bed sheets somehow covering her down to the waist.

A tent an inch wide and a foot tall standing proudly between her legs.

“ _Ohhhhh fuck!_ ” she cries, and flings the thing off her.

The water bottle tips over with an unceremonious thump, to which she grabs and hurls it at the wall away from her.

“Oh fuck,” she whines, collapsing back into bed. “Oh fuck.”

She lays there for a few minutes, the heels of her hands digging into her heels, her heartbeat slowing, the air getting thicker and hotter like an oven. “Oh fuck,” she repeats a third time, softly.  _It’s just a dream._ “Just a dream.”  _It was only a dream._

She sighs, swallows _—_ her mouth a desert, her breath a graveyard’s delight—and removes her hands from her face to toss them spreadeagled away from her.

_Gods in Heaven. What the hell was that?_

_A dream,_ her inner voice tells her.

_I fucking know that, ya fucking git! I’m asking what the hell was that?!  
_

_It was only a dream._

“Just a dream,” she echoes, and pushes up to sit to look around.

Doodle is gone.

She sniffs contemptuously. “Figures.” She swings her legs over the side of the bed and stands. Stumbles, catches herself on the vanity, and straightens. She stretches out, yawning mightily. “One o’clock already.” _I wonder if she’s home…._

She goes to the bathroom and, after refreshing herself and becoming more alert, comes back out. She takes one look at the TV, which is showcasing, what else, another goddamn talk show discussing personal care products from two-bit quacks, unsubstantiated gossip, and how to know for sure if the current flavor of the month sexual position is really giving you your bang for your buck or killing your buck to leave dumped on the side of the road of life.

Velvet scoffs, leaving the bedroom on a brisk heel.

The house is an oven, but outside is even hotter yet. The heat cooks and broils on the street, turns the skyscraper-studded horizon into a steam-infused painting. The sound of someone’s bicycle bell rings close nearby, only to be dogpiled and suffocated by another idiot blasting gangster rap on the other side of the street. It’s immediately followed by the spark and splutter of a power saw, the roar of a blowtorch.

Doodle’s on Eleanor’s side of the strip of lawn dividing their houses, running in circles trying to catch his tail.

“Don’t you get tired of doing that after a while?” Eleanor asks him. “That can’t be good for you.” She stands a little ways from him on the walk, watching with a befuddled expression that quickly melts into amusement. If Doodle heard her, he makes no inclination; he keeps on spinning around and around, mouth hanging open and filled with teeth only a mother could love in their most treasured nightmares.

“I’ve got a better idea. Here,” she says. “I’ve got a stick of beef jerky on me that I got at the gas station on the way home. Free of charge, of course: everyone knows you’re their favorite customer. I’ll give it to you, but you need to show me what you remember. Okay? Does that sound good?” She holds it up for him to see.

At that, Doodle comes to a stop and trots up to her with an upturned look that’ s intensely fixated and shining with adoration and anticipation.  It’s the kind of look he gives Velvet that makes her think he can just will a piece of food out of her hand or off the kitchen counter or maybe even out of the refrigerator.

(Knowing him, she wonders if he can do something like that as he does when he disappears. Somehow, getting actual, physical confirmation wouldn’t surprise her.)

“Alright,” says Eleanor. “Let me see you sit.”

Doodle plops his ass on the ground.

“Good boy,” she says. She peels off the plastic, breaks off a piece of jerky, and tosses it to him. He stretches his neck out and snags it out of the air. “Now...speak.”

“Woof!”

“Good.” Another piece. “Let me see you sit up. Up. Give me paw.” Doodle sits up, front paws raised, and offers one for her to shake. “Give me other paw,” she says, and he gives her his other paw. “Give me other paw.” He switches to his left paw, and they shake. “Good boy.” She breaks off a bigger chunk and he gobbles it up. “Roll over. Left. Right. Left. Good boy. Sit up. Up. Can I see you dance? Can you show me you can dance?”

“Woof!” Doodle says, and he stands up on his hind legs and begins to hop around in a circle a couple times from one paw to the other.

Eleanor laughs. “Good boy! You remember! Now, one more trick and I’ll give you the rest, alright? Okay.”  She strikes a pose, legs apart, shoulders squared and one arm held out before her, hand shaped like a gun. “Bang! Drop dead!”

The way Doodle drops to the ground in mid-jump and the melodramatic huff that comes out of him  is  some of the best acting  Velvet ’s ever seen. All the film industry awards should go to him and no one else, these same method actors that are only paid per word by the script and nothing else.  There would be no contest.

S he shoots a quick glimpse at Eleanor’s stance. There’s not too much to tell in the way of clothes, but the way she holds herself briefly brings to mind  the same manner she took up on the track field for a pole vault or a high jump, with only V elvet and Rokurou for company (and sometimes Niko, when she wasn’t buried in schoolwork, and even Eizen, when he wasn’t busy with Edna  and classes and shitty minimum wage jobs).  Body honed and anticipating for the sound of the gunshot, strength coursing molten hot through her veins and sculpted into her arms, her legs. Erupting from her as she leaps and twists in the air, completely and totally in command even as gravity intercepts to pull her down.

_Fine-tune them one by one until you get the pegs just the way you like them,_ Velvet recounts, as Doodle gets up and all but sucks the jerky out of Eleanor’s grasp to tear into digestible pieces.  _And then you can play to your heart’s content._

S he imagines how it would feel, to have that kind of power in her hands. How much it would take, and how long it would take, to simply pin  Eleanor on her back and make her  scream, make her mewl, make her melt like putty in her hands as she is stroked, touched, caressed, worshiped with the reverence  only a god dess deserves. She imagines the scratches that would come from those nails digging into her back  and the pulling on her hair , the bites  marking her neck and shoulders,  the swollen redness of her lips and the sound of her name coming from them dripping with raw, primal desire.

_Easy, tiger…Easy…._

Velvet sighs. All that and more, coming and going in a flash of heat and stirring that’s borderline painful. _She won’t be able to tell. At least, she shouldn’t._ “Welcome back,” she calls, as she crosses the driveway to the strip.

“Hey,” Eleanor says, looking up from where she’s squashing and rubbing Doodle’s face into mush in her hands.

“You have fun?”

“Oh, yes. Nothing a few kids won’t hurt. They said they miss you. They’re wondering when you're coming around again to visit.”

“Next week. They can live until then. You can keep them busy.”

“Hah, by that point they’ll be ready to combust and go hog-wild.”

“As you said, nothing a few kids won’t hurt. What’s the worst they can do, dogpile me?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Yes. And with Moana _—_ ”

“ _Ka_ moana.”

“Yes. With _Ka_ moana being in charge, things could get hairy.”

“Very hairy.”

“More hairy than Doodle?”

“Woof!”

“Well..." Eleanor shrugs. "Maybe? Possibly?”

“Hairier than Doodle then.”

“That’s about the gist of it.”

“Woof!”

“Good. I welcome the challenge those little monsters will give me.”

“They’re not monsters.”

“Okay. Little hellions.”

“They’re not hellions.”

“Alright. Angels. But do remember that angels and demons _—_ ”

“Are the same thing. I know, I know,” Eleanor finishes with a roll of her eyes. Then she smiles. “You’re incorrigible.”

“Don’t forget terrible. Did you try the holy water yet?”

Eleanor gives her a light shove on the shoulder. “You’re insane. And for the record, no, I did not. Don’t give the kids ideas.”

“Who says it has to be me? You’re not with them twenty-four-seven. They could come up with it on their own.”

“I know.”

“Maybe you’ll witness a miracle _—_ ”

“Oh my god, shut up.” Another shove. “Medissa’s right, you’re a bad influence.”

“Being too good gets boring. Sometimes you need to be a little bad to be good.”

“Hmph. Typical Velvet Crowe answer.”

“The only kind of answer. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Eleanor sniffs. “Well. Sometimes. But not all the time.”

“So I’m right.”

“Yes and no."

“I’m always right.”

“Hmph. Not just terrible and incorrigible and insane—you’re insufferable.”

“And you wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Woof!”

“See, even Doodle agrees with me. You can’t argue against a dog.”

“That’s not fair,” Eleanor grumbles, and shakes her head. There’s a pout on her lips and a light dusting of red on her cheeks. Could it be from the heat? From embarrassment? Either way, she looks cute like that: feathers ruffled, too shy to meet her eye, unable to find the means to one-up her.

Very briefly, Velvet considers the face she’d make if she reached out and moved the hair out of her face, take her from underneath the chin, and touch her lips to hers. Not a mere press but a connection to savor, to feel, remember. The thought of her lip gloss and the sliver of teeth on plastic causes her already inflamed walls to swell with a fresh surge of blood.

_Empyreans preserve me…._

“Hey, you alright?” Eleanor asks, turning to her with concern. “Your face is all red.” Then, before Velvet can answer, she touches her cheeks with the back of a hand. “You’re warm, too. Did you just come out of the garden?”

_I think I’m coming out in more places than you and I can imagine._ “...I just got out of the shower a while ago,” she answers lamely, and hopes it doesn’t creep into her voice. “And it’s warm out. You know how it is here.”

“Still. You’re out in the sun.”

“I have water.”

“...You’re buck naked in the garden,” Eleanor stammers. “Y-You’re going to need more than just that.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Why can’t you garden like a normal person?”

“Because being normal’s boring.”

“You should still take care of yourself. It doesn’t get cool very often.”

“Or snows.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re thinking of gardening in the snow.”

“Nah. I’ve got indoor plants for that.”

Eleanor snorts. “You always have an answer for everything.”

“I have to be prepared.”

“What if you aren’t?”

“Oh, trust me. I will be.”

“Fine. You will be.”

“Mmm. Definitely.”

“Hey. Let’s go to the mall.”

“So soon? But you just got back. Don't you want to get settled in first?”

“I know, but I'm good right now. I just want to tell you how my day went.”

“Nothing bad, I presume?”

“No, nothing at all.”

“You sure? Did someone make you cry again?”

“N-No! No one made me cry!”

“Because if they did, then the brats will get upset.” And if the brats got upset, well, that’s one thing; but them getting upset means upsetting Eleanor, and upsetting them would mean upsetting _her_. And oh, that’s the last thing this city, this whole damn state and probably every state in the entire country, wants: the unholy wrath of Velvet Crowe come roaring straight out of the depths of hell. _Again_.  


( But Eleanor doesn’t need to know that. )

“The kids are fine! I’m fine!”

“For real?”

“Yes, for real, you dork! And if I wasn’t, you’d know!”

“Woof!”

“I’m sorry, Doodle, I can’t forget you. You’d remember, won’t you?”

“Woof!”

“You know I’m standing right here, right? I can hear you. I have ears.”

“Yes, I can see you. I have eyes, and ears. But Doodle has a great nose; he can smell things out faster than you or I can. It’s in the genes.”

“Then I’ll learn from him and come to you if you need help.”

“How?”

“I’ll find a way. And when I do, I’ll be better than the dogs.”

“Hmm!” says Doodle.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Eleanor gives her a hard stare, as if she doesn’t believe her. Then she bows her head and tosses it back up  with a beaming grin, body shaking with silent laughter. “You’re something else, Velvet.”

“I’d wager you won’t be able to find me in any dictionary.”

“I’m not sure I would.”

“You can try.”

“I’ll be more than welcome to. Well, let’s get going, while the schools are still in session. Let me go grab my purse.”

“A-Alright. Don’t forget your helmet, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“Okay. You do that. Go on. I’ll get Lucifron warmed up.” Velvet sends her off with a pat on the back and watches her head inside. At the way her body moves. “Goddamn, Rokurou, you weren't kidding. That ass _is_ fine.” She turns away, facing the motorcycle. Doodle is standing in front of it. His tail wags, unfurled from its high curl. He smiles.

“Hello,” says Velvet.

HI.

WOULD YOU MIND TELLING ME WHAT THAT WAS ALL ABOUT?

“Stop giving me that look, dammit. We’re just talking. Friends talk a lot with each other. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

IF YOU SAY SO.

“I know what I said,” Velvet mumbles. Yet her hand comes up, anyway, gingerly touches it to her cheek and feels the warmth that Eleanor’s hand left behind. That same hand that didn’t let go until she’d gone inside.

_She trusts me. She has to be. She wouldn’t have touched me for that long if she didn’t._

A drumbeat resounds in her chest, crushing like a vice that rocks the world under her feet and squeezes her head until it feels as though it’s about to be fit to burst. Her heart palpitates.

_Is it possible? Could it be…that maybe she…?_ _That I could be…_

S he swallows around the lump forming in her throat. A product of dryness...but the thought of the case of water, as well as the stereo and the CD that’s still inside it, doesn’t appeal to her to do anything about it. She decides that perhaps something sweeter, something cold and strong with taste, will do wonders for her.

Indeed.

“Come on, boy,” Velvet calls firmly. It comes out as a weak croak instead, but Doodle listens nonetheless. He is a phantom she barely notices as she goes to collect the bike keys, her wallet, her helmet off the shelf.

S he’s straddled over Lucy and got her purring when Eleanor comes out, purse strapped across her chest and helmet sliding smoothly over her head. “Doodle’s coming with,” she says. “Is that alright?”

“Of course! Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because for a minute there, I could’ve sworn you asked me out on a date!”

“W-What!” she says, and winces as the prongs and the buckle of the straps pinch her fingers. “Th-This isn’t a date!”

“Ohhh? You sure about that? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure it sounded like a date _—_ ”

“I just want to hang out with you, that’s all!”

“Yeah, I know. I just wanted to give you shit and see the look on your face.”

“Ugh! Just...Just drive!” Eleanor drops down into the seat with a huff and puts her arms around Velvet’s waist.

_Awwww man,_ Velvet squeezes her eyes shut and breathes  slowly in, in, in .  _Aw man…._ She breathes slowly out, out, out.  She opens her eyes, knocks out the kickstand and, despite the lance of fire that tickles and buzzes in her gut, clenches her thighs against the bike’s chassis.

She is, and will be, eternally grateful she doesn’t orgasm from the shocks that come from flooring the gas pedal right then and there.  It’s a test of sheer willpower and determination to not lean back into  Eleanor’s embrace and  just forget about everything  that’s occurring all around them.  (Would that it make for a fitting end, but wiping out on the road will hurt like a bitch, and Doodle will be with them if by some unfathomable reason she winds up in the Steppes and not the gates of Hell.  Even in the afterlife, there won’t be any chances for her  to take. And Eleanor…well, at least Eleanor would have the good fortune to ream her ass out for being inattentive and foolish for all eternity,  or fate decides to spin the Wheel once more and they get to skirt Death by the teeth again—same characters, different stage sets, stories decided by the roll of the die.)

Her concentration wavers once or twice, but she tells herself it’s the people in front of and beside her that are being  idiots because common sense happens to become conveniently forgotten once they’re behind the wheel. It’s not the way Eleanor clutches a little tighter and presses into her a little harder that does it. It’s not the way her voice comes out, muffled through the helmet,  cautioning her to  be more careful (“...and  don’t pick a fight!” “Who says I’m going to?” “ I know how you are! I can tell! ”).

N o fights are picked ( the temptation, however, tasted so very succulent), and when they get to the mall the first thing they do is head over to the food court. There are plenty of people here today, but not so much that it’ll prove to be a detriment to get around or wait in line for very long.  They go at a leisurely pace, passing by store outlets with their overly bright paint jobs, satirical adverts  taking jabs at politics and toxic masculinity as well as feminity, and ear-shattering blasts of heavy metal vocalists screaming their lungs raw and smashing another six-digit gald guitar to smithereens.  Velvet tags behind Eleanor at a snail’s pace, assuming the usual position that either coincidence or manifest destiny always puts her in: feet dragging over the tiles, thumbs hooked in her rear pants pockets, ears trying to attune to the jazz music that’s synonymous with coffee shops and college campuses that are so famously prevalent in fanfictions, Doodle paddling along at her side  like a little white angel that prefers to be on the ground than perched on her shoulder while futilely whispering encouraging pleas to step away from the darkness the human mind is capable of.

Not that that would matter in the first place, because no matter what happens, no matter how dull the mall is right now, Velvet still has the pleasure of getting a fantastic view of  Eleanor’s hip-hugging jeans and her hip-hugging ass.

_I should try applying for colleges,_ Velvet thinks,  _and get a degree in politics, wait another ten years, and run for President. Win the popular votes and make Bigsley's boys pursue another career in the workforce that won't see them get overworked to death. Or maybe go on another rampage, grab the underworld by the balls, air some dirty laundry, and become the ruler of Midgand. Lay down the law the way I want._

_If I had the power, I’d make that ass illegal._

_So illegal._

_No one can ever touch it. No one can ever look at it. They can’t even think about it. I would impose a hefty fine—so hefty the thought of going broke and destitute will stop them from committing crimes. The underworld might suffer, but at least there will peace on this little slice of earth._

_Oh yes. There will be peace._

F ood wafts in her nostrils, faint and cloying with traces of grilled smoke,  seared beef, and  soybean oil. The steakhouse is coming up, The Jade Luminescence, a Far Continent diner that at one point was heavily funded and operated by the Rangetsu family. Old Man Kurogane had been the boss back then,  before he popped his membrane and spoke only about maintaining his honor with the blade he eventually gave to Rokurou, before Shigure’s turf was set ablaze from all the rioting. Now, two years later, it’s under the management of a suave, hawk-eyed man  named Eguille and a band of loud, merry buskers that have added possibly authentic bird skulls, arrowheads, dreamcatchers, and carved wishbones to the walls and ceiling already loaded with Far Continent tapestries,  hookahs, and ukiyo-e prints of seraphic dragons and Avarostian (or perhaps, Eguille added once, Destiny Dawn-era;  the chronology is still being debated upon ) hunters scouring game under the night sky and  the twin moons .

_Haven’t been here in a while. Good choice, Eleanor._ Even before everything, the trip here wasn’t often; Velvet lived too far from the city to make it worth the money and Eleanor was just about knee-deep in her honors program, but Rokurou had the money (honest money, he claims, since he’d been known around the neighborhood to do the odd job at either the crack of dawn or the ass-end of twilight, although both Velvet and Eleanor assumed he got it from ‘borrowing’ his mother’s – and then later, Shigure’s – credit card) and always paid for the bus fares, the meals, and whatever knickknack caught their eye as they window shopped and putzed around the outlets. Now they were closer, the streets an uncontested free-for-all where the calm never came and the storm never stops, a shit-stained diamond in the rough reemerging from the ashes of the Shepherd’s empire even as the lights of the other city-states blotted out the sun and cast them into shadow.

V elvet sees it out of the corner of her eye, and she considers walking on, one ear on the music and the other on Eleanor wondering aloud what today’s specials are.  Yet it shouts at her even when it should be quiet by all rights, drenched in loud conversation, the water fountain, the saturated colors and the light fixtures turning the glass display into solar panels.  It shouts for her to look, to give her a moment of its time.

Velvet pauses and looks.

_Oh._

She’s never worn a tuxedo before. It was always dresses for parties and get-togethers with Celica’s friends (which were usually just the other townsfolk she’d meet up at the market on the other side of Aball) or Arthur’s colleagues: mostly fellow academics that graduated from King Claudin’s Royal Academy that adhered to spread the teachings of the Empyreans to third world countries, but also the normin, with their too-large eyes, stunted height, and multi-colored hair that was more appropriate for ravers than environmentalists, televangelists, investment bankers, and wandering minstrels asking for pocket change that would be go toward a good cause. Laphicet could almost never go, but when he was well enough to be out of bed long enough to last a couple hours he would be in the white pinstripe suit that made him look like a mafia boss in a poorly lit church.

The tuxedo here is slim, black, with a lounge jacket draped over an ironed turnover dress shirt and a black tie.  There are three others like it, in two and three-piece affairs and doublets; one of the mannequins is even sporting a dapper bowler  and posing with a walking cane. On her right, garbed and similarly arrayed, are wedding dresses: lace, silk, short and long, veiled.

A lways the dresses, always the fancy blouses and the Mary Janes that bite into her heels and pantyhose so frail the ankles are two fibers away from shredding. Celica always said it was just for a couple hours but made it known that Velvet still looked pretty in them; cute enough to be eaten, she’d say, and, cheesy compliments aside, Velvet had to agree they weren’t so bad,  they had their moments . Laphicet, on the other hand, that little bugger, he always had to warn her to keep her eyes on the boys, they  could be such a conniving lot. You could hit them over the head with a brick and it still wouldn’t slow them down, not so long as they got her to cave in and could celebrate in their treehouses or bike racks or wherever boys liked to hang out when they didn’t have parents and older siblings or authority figures breathing down their necks about manners and respecting personal boundaries.  He pushed her and pushed her and pushed her to try to be a little more feminine, try to go out of her way to make herself more attractive even if it killed her slowly and painfully on the inside; and when he saw she was doubling down on it and showed no interest in giving the poor bastards a chance  or wanting to change herself to appeal to others, he changed gears.

_Okay, so maybe you’re not into guys. Maybe you are into chicks, or you’re just being diabetic on Niko._

_Diabetic?! I’m not being diabetic!_

_...Or maybe you’re just not interested. I don’t know. But if you ever change your mind, at least try to look like you didn’t come crawling out of a swamp. You’re a walking mess as it is._

_H-Hey! Maybe there are people that like swamps and walking messes! You never know!_

_Well if you ever meet someone who’s like that, bring her over and I’ll introduce myself._

_I don’t even know if I want to date!_

_Oh, I’ll know._

_How?_

_You let me be the judge of that._

_Should that concern me?_

_You’ll see._

_I wonder if he knew,_ Velvet wonders. He had met Eleanor, once, when she came over to study. They’d hit it off, had each other at hello, and always talked her ear off about books, history, the malakhim and the seraphim, dragons and the Summon Spirits,  anything and everything that flew over her head with their big, fancy words and mathematical equations that served to drive her up the walls. But not once did he comment on Eleanor; in fact, he seemed to go about the rest of his day as if she had never been there at all.  Oh, he had said she was cute, and smart (“Something you oughta try being more like!”), but that was as far as he went. It was always about Niko, always about pushing Velvet—one of the two—to do something before the spark was lost, or they found someone else, or they stayed friends or went their separate ways and never saw each other again once they graduated.

_Maybe he didn’t._

She takes a glance at the price, grimaces, and thinks about walking away and catching up with Eleanor before she notices.

She doesn’t. She stares at the tuxedo some more.

It looks like it’d be a little big on her, probably hang off her frame like a tarp than fit accordingly to her body. The hat can go, but the cane could stay; after all, you could still look cut a fine, dapper figure while beating the daylights out of a fool with an old-fashioned whooping stick. The rest of the get-up: the jacket, the shirt, the tie….

_Yes. That could work._

Then Velvet looks at the dresses, and lets her mind carry her away.

She ducks her head, face warming. She looks at Doodle, who’s staring up at the display case, too.

He looks at her.

“What are you looking at?” Eleanor asks, comes up beside her. “...Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” she says again, meekly. “Velvet, please don’t tell me you want to buy a suit just for the hell of it.”

“I’d sooner sell my soul than pay out of pocket for something I’ll only wear a couple times in my life.”

“You mean just once?”

“Pretty much.”

“Ha.” Eleanor smiles wistfully. “You’re still not interested in getting married, huh?”

Velvet tips her shoulders up in a shrug. “I don’t know. It’s never really crossed my mind.”

“Not even a little?”

“Well. I’ve thought about it, when I was younger. But no, I’m not really interested. Too many idiots in the world.”

“No? Not one person, in a sea of idiots, has tickled your fancy?”

“Hey. I thought you wanted to go out to eat, not play twenty questions.”

“This is my last question, I promise.”

V elvet harrumphs, but she acquiesces and feigns contemplation. She already knows the answer to this question. She already knows how it played out and if Eleanor knows her as well as she claims she does then she should know how it all came to an end.  There’s a faint  twinge of the old hurt  at the thought of Niko, but it goes just as it comes.

“There was someone, back in high school,” she says, “but from the impression I got, I think she just wanted to stay friends. Which was alright. She was pretty cool. I...don’t think there’s anyone else in particular that I’ve taken interest in. At least, not yet.” A pause. “I want to be sure first before I, uh, I guess before I initiate. See what happens.”

Doodle lets out a huge yawn that cuts abruptly in a sneeze. It takes all of Velvet’s energy not to react like a drama queen. _Doodle, I swear to Hellgates you keep doing this on purpose just to piss me off._ _Leave me alone._ “What about you? Still holding off for that special someone?”

“As always.”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind waiting. But it’s just as you said: I want to take the time to understand that what I feel is genuine before I decide to come forward and make my intentions clear.”

“After that, it’s all a gamble, isn’t it? Lucky sevens or snake eyes.”

“It doesn’t hurt to hope that maybe something good might come out of it. You never know.”

“Well, if you ever meet that someone, be sure to introduce ‘em to me.”

“What, so you can scare them off?”

“Not if they prove worthy. And if they do, then you have my blessing to go elope and, I don’t know, have a shotgun wedding in Altamira or Rashugal. Somewhere. You gotta have all that glitz and glamour. The booze. The drunk priest reading your vows under the eyes of the gods while disco music plays in the background.”

“I am _not_ having a drunk priest lead the ceremony,” Eleanor scoffs, but the hint of laughter is in her voice, her smile a twitch.

“But having a plain, old wedding sounds boring.”

“No, it’d be romantic.”

‘You think so?”

“...I’d like it to be. But I’m getting way too ahead of myself. Maybe one day, I’ll be lucky enough to wear a dress and walk down the aisle.”

“What, that one play we had in junior year didn’t count?”

“No, it was just that. Plus, you and the rest of the drama club kept crashing it during practice.”

“Rokurou wasn’t taking his role seriously, anyway. I was trying to do you both a favor and spare you the torture.”

“Annie still hasn’t forgiven you for that.”

“If she ever gets around to publishing her novel, maybe we can look into it and see if she’s used it for inspiration.”

“Probably.”

“Hey. Listen. You’re a real keeper, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. Somebody’s going to show up one day when you least expect it and sweep you off your feet. And even if you never get married, it’s not the end of the world. Nowadays people are content with just cohabitation. There’s somebody for everybody, if they’re interested and willing, and it doesn't have to be that intimate. You gotta do what you feel is right and they gotta accommodate. You’ll see. Just have to give it time.”

“You’re right. I’ll get a dress someday, one way or another.”

“But not from here.”

“Heavens no. Not unless I win the lottery.”

“You don’t even know what the quality’s like. It could be trash.”

“Says the person who stopped walking and almost made me go eat alone.”

“I was scoping out the competition. I’m thinking of buying stocks and start a get-rich-quick scheme and monopolize the market.”

“Oh yeah right. You would’ve flunked math and gotten held back if it wasn’t for me.”

“You can join if you like. Founders’ privileges. We can make Doodle the company mascot.”

“Woof!”

“I think the money I’m making is good enough right now.”

“Maybe in the future?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Is that a yes?”

“You’ll see.”

‘That’s a yes then.”

“Sure. Whatever you say. Now come on, before there’s a line and we have to wait.”

There isn’t a line forming whatsoever, but  there’s always a lot of people from all walks of life and different parts of the world coming to this mall for reasons known only to them.  T his is usually around the time of day when it does start to get packed before rush hour hits its peak,  and the longer Velvet stands here ( _Like a dope!_ she thinks with a grimace) the further away Eleanor is going to be and lost to the crowd for Velvet to wrestle her way through to get to her.

_And then she’ll say ‘that’s what you get for taking so long’,_ she surmises. “ Let’s go, Doodle.  I’d rather not make her wait and  have her pitch a fit.  Otherwise I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Doodle gets to his feet,  stretches out, and when he straightens he turns around with a huff that almost sounds like a  sight that sounds...disappointed. What’s there to be disappointed about in getting an earful?  Or maybe he’s looking forward to it; you can never tell with that smile of his, and his bright eyes.

_It’s just the lights._ _His eyes are so black and his face so white. It’s just the way the shadows reflect off him._

_Gah. Why do I even bother trying to understand him._

The line still hasn’t formed, if at all, but there are plenty of patrons inside already seated at the grill where chefs are chopping vegetables, flipping half-cooked shrimp, and flambeing pans of thick beef over the griddle. Some of them see Doodle tagging behind her and look, and while there are those that do a double-take or sneer at him (“Don’t worry,” she always tells them. “He’s a service dog. He’s just so good at his job he doesn’t need ID.”), but everyone else for the most part acknowledge him without fuss and go back to their meals.

Velvet ignores them, and Eguille and his workers are too busy to notice her. She makes her way down the table where Eleanor is sitting at the corner, her purse occupying the stool adjacent to her.

“I’m here,” Velvet says. “I didn’t keep you waiting long, did I?”

“Not at all. It’s not as busy as I thought it’d be.”

“It’s always busy even when it’s not. But I guess you can say we came at the right time.”

“Yeah. Here, sit down.” She moves her purse off the stool, to which Velvet goes over and takes a seat. Doodle makes himself comfortable between the two of them on the floor and spreads his paws out.

They’re given menus and they place orders, contenting themselves with watching the chefs lighting the onion volcanoes, tossing over fried rice bowls, twirling utensils in the air and up behind and around their bodies with a rubbery nimbleness that captivates Eleanor’s attention and even gets Velvet to sit up a little straighter and look less like a detached feline in repose. The food starts to trickle in their way one by one, and Velvet defers to Eleanor as she recounts the events of her day so far.

Velvet takes her time, occasionally tossing scraps of chicken and shrimp to the floor for Doodle to lick up with absentminded care. There’s music—some sort of alternative rock—playing on the overhead speakers to match the frenzied pace. There’s the scent of food, sharp and sweet and salty, ripe in the air and teasing her senses to a full seduction.

There’s Eleanor, content and relaxed and so very, very close.

_This is nice,_ V elvet thinks, watching her eat.  _This is...very nice. I think...I think maybe...I can get used to this. Even if it still feels like...I don’t deserve any of this._

_If there's one good thing that has happened in my life, and stays with me the most, it's you. At least I have you, the one remaining constant that's always there. I don’t think I’d want to give that away even if I had the opportunity to have everyone and everything come back to me._

“You’ve got that look on your face again.” Eleanor puts her chopsticks down on the plate and rests her chin atop her laced fingers.

Velvet blinks. “What look?”

“The kind that says you’re spacing out. What’s up?”

“I’m not bored, if that’s you mean.”

“No, but you only look like that when you have a lot on your mind and don’t know how to say it.”

“...I look like this all the time.”

“Yeah. You do. But this feels different.”

_How can it feel different if it doesn’t_ look _different, though?_ Velvet thinks, on top of another voice  overlapping :  _Shit, she’s noticed. Think of something. What can change the subject so quickly?_

Then it dawns on her. It's so simple she's almost taken aback that she didn't think to mention it much sooner. “Oh, just thinking about the weather,” she says with a crooked smile, and relishes at the sight of Eleanor’s face going completely white. “How about that Friday sunshine?”

Eleanor doesn’t answer. In fact, the noise that wants to come out of her throat is utterly crushed. The look she gives her, as she struggles to find the words to say, would scream offense and indignation. But Velvet knows that look, because it’s one that’s reserved only for her: that’s the look of a woman who’s ready to sucker punch her off her seat—maybe across the room, but that’s entirely dependent on how hard she clenches her fists and beet-red her face gets.

She doesn’t sock her, nor upend her from the stool, or even grab the back of her head and smash it against the counter. Everything from the neck up, however, is matching her hair quite nicely. Even the pupils of her eyes are tiny, black pencil dots. Instead she whirls away in a huff, takes up her chopsticks, and grabs a large chunk of beef between them with a vicious swipe. “J-Just shut up and eat!”

“Hey, I’m just saying: it’s going to be a gorgeous day. Perfect to just, you know, water the garden and get our hands dirty.” Velvet crosses her arms on the table and leans over them, towards Eleanor, speaking in a tone low and rough only she can hear. "Sounds nice, doesn't it? You get to show me how good a Hume woman's hands can be before anyone else. I'm _touched_."

Eleanor's brows furrow, the dimples of her frown turning severe, eyes downcast. Yet the blush still dusts her cheeks, and quickly darkening. “Your food’s going to get cold!” she grumbles, and all but shoves the beef into her mouth.

Velvet smirks and leans back. “Yeah. That’d be such a waste if it did.” She plucks a piece of shrimp and reaches down to drop it on the floor. “Here, Doodle.”

“Woof,” Doodle says, more harrumph than bark, and laps it up.

_Oh don't give me that. You don't know how I feel._ She picks up her chopsticks, adjusts the grip, and, just as she's about to eat, pauses. She casts a glimpse at Eleanor.

Their eyes meet, only for a second. It will be hard for Velvet to say who looked away first; it happened so fast. But in that moment there's a spark, ephemeral and fleeting that tugs at her before it's gone. (It will stay with her for the rest of the day, and go into the night; she'll think about how dreadful being heart palpitations are, how much of a nuisance it is to always be short of breath. If she leaves them untreated then this could turn into something much more serious if left unchecked and untreated. They're such nasty, dreadful, obnoxious things. They make it so hard to focus that everything just falls away.)

_...I don't think I know all that well myself._

Velvet sits back up to take a pull from the glass of seltzer water beside her. _Much better,_ she thinks and sets it down.


End file.
